Of Mice and Mischief Makers
by I-AM-SiriusLOCKED
Summary: Dramatis personae: an alien who thinks himself a god; a pickpocket with a plan; a valet; several tramps, gangbangers and general ne'er-do-wells; a kid; the guardian of the rainbow bridge. Oh, and a mouse. It wasn't surprising that Loki's hamartia would be a woman, but he certainly didn't expect her to be so... dirty.
1. Chapter 1

_But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,_  
 _In proving foresight may be vain:_  
 _The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men_  
 _Gang aft agley,_  
 _An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,_  
 _For promis'd joy!_

 _\- To a Mouse, Robert Burns_

Loki knew coming back to Midgard would be a bad idea, though he didn't expect his misfortunes to manifest in such a manner.

But the nine realms thought him dead, and he was intrigued as to what his brother- it felt strange to call him that- was doing there. So he cast a shade to play the role of Odin in his place, and took a route only he knew to reach what some called Earth and others called Terra. Personally, he liked to call it a nuisance.

He knew turning up at the residence of the Avengers would be suicide, but Thor had mentioned other places to what he thought was his father. First, he went to a university in England which was a building so beautiful Loki could not believe it had been crafted by Midgardian hands, a place he had been sorry to leave for the cold steel stalagmites of New York. There, he visited a stuffy, overheated place which sold bitter human drinks, which the arrogant man with the voluminous armour had apparently brought Thor to on many occasions. Here, the uncouth serving girl was rude enough to drive him out of the shop, with only an assurance that if Thor was in trouble, she would know. Loki doubted this.

The trip was proving fruitless, and Loki cast a glamour over himself as he walked through back-alleys with the hood of his mundane clothes pulled up. He had to admit, they were slightly more comfortable than his usual leather robes, but visually they were nowhere near as impressi-

"Sorry," muttered somebody as they brushed against him, and walked on without even looking up. Loki resisted the urge to strike them, knowing it would only gain him unwarranted attention, then realised that the pocket of his jacket in which he kept a wallet full of Midgardian money had become significantly lighter.

A mortal had pickpocketed _him_?

"Excuse me," he said loudly, turning on his heel towards the shadowy figure, "I believe you have something of mine."

They broke into a run and Loki gave chase, actually revelling in the adrenaline it gave him- being king was wonderful, but by the love of Yggdrasil, it could be boring sometimes. He rounded a corner after the thief and caught them up in time to slam them into a wall. A hand flew towards his face and Loki, expecting a punch, deflected it with his arm- but fingernails raked across his sleeve and the person hissed in pain. A woman, then, since men never clawed. A desperate woman too, and a quick one. She also didn't smell particularly pleasant, but that was hardly relevant.

In the half a second he stopped to dwell on this, she had pulled out a knife and he only just twisted away in time to avoid being stabbed between the ribs. The attempt made him laugh a little, and he began to make more of an effort.

He forced the armed hand up against the wall and pressed into it until her fingers opened and the blade fell to the floor, but while he was distracted by this the toe of her boot connected with his shin and her free hand jabbed at his neck, the two painful strikes sending him staggering back. She managed to get two steps away before he slammed her face-first into the wall and stuck his hand in the pocket of her own garment- only to draw it out again with a yelp as something bit into it.

The woman sniggered as Loki jumped back. "That'll be Algernon," she told him in a rough accent, pulling a small white mouse out of her pocket. "Good boy."

"That's repulsive," said Loki, and the woman shrugged.

"Worked though, dinnit? Although people don't normally figure out I've tapped 'em until they get home."

"I don't normally get... Tapped," Loki replied shortly. "Could I have my money back?"

"Say please," she said, still cooing over the rodent.

Loki pursed his lips. His pride was telling him not to, but magical money took a lot of effort to make. "Please."

"No," she said, and sniggered again.

He was about to give up and walk away, but the sixth sense he had inherited from his mother told him to stay, that anyone capable of pickpocketing him might be useful. "What is your name, girl?"

Both she and the mouse gave him a beady look. "What shall we call me today, Algernon? I don't think I've ever been a Val before. Makes me think of verrucas, but we used up all the nice names ages ago. Still, Val's a bit ugh."

 _She's talking to a rat_ , thought Loki, _and for some reason I'm expecting a civilised response._

Meanwhile, the woman appeared to have reached a decision. "Today," she said, "I'm gonna be Marylou."

"Whatever makes you happy," Loki said drily.

"Why're you hanging around then, posh boy? Want your wallet back?"

Loki had had enough of this. He was cold, he was annoyed, his attempt to check on Thor was getting nowhere and- then it occurred to him, just as something occurred to Marylou.

"You wanna pay me to do summat?" she asked him, slipping the mouse back into her pocket.

"Such as?" Loki asked, thinking it would be a good idea to make her think that she suggested the idea.

"Anything that might be a little too illegal for someone of your poshness," she said brusquely, all business now it was clear he wasn't going to accost her again. "I don't do sex, though. I know some girls who will, and guys if that's your thing, but I draw the line there."

"Maybe another time," said Loki, who as Odin had not been able to see his favourite handmaiden in far too long. "How would you be interested in a little covert surveillance?"

"You mean tag 'em?"

"I assume so."

"That's basically my speciality, but… Who?" she asked warily, "if it's your ex, then no way. That's creepy."

"You talk to a rat," Loki said testily, "I hardly think you are in a position to decide what is 'creepy'."

"Bitch, Algernon's a mouse. And if you don't want me to help…" she tailed off, and went to move away- while still holding onto his money, Loki remembered.

"Thor," he told her, "I want you to tell me what Thor is doing."

She stiffened. "As in, Avenger Thor? God of thunder Thor?"

"Is there any other?"

"I dunno, man, people give their kids weird names. How much will you pay me?"

"How much would you like?" Loki asked, and Marylou smiled widely. The tooth behind her left upper canine was missing, but apart from that they were surprisingly clean for such a dirty person. "I assume you are currently lacking a home."

"What gave it away?" she asked, still grinning.

"If anything, I would say the smell. While you work for me, Marylou, you will have a roof over your head and whatever else you need shall be supplied, whatever it may be. When I am… satisfied with your services, I will pay you whatever you think they are worth."

Once, Loki would have forced someone to do this, blackmailed or hypnotised them perhaps. But the woman- more of a girl really, though every mortal was a girl to him- seemed willing enough anyway, and what was a little Midgardian expenditure to him, a king?

"Sounds like a deal t'me," she said, "so long as I keep your wallet."

"Why?" Loki asked. It seemed so small a thing compared to what he was offering her.

"Because I earned it. Maybe not fair and square, but I did."

That skewed, albeit slightly admirable, logic actually made Loki smile. "Fine," he said, "come with me."

"Where to?" Marylou asked, following him out of the alley.

"Your new lodgings."

%

The look on Marylou's face, and the expression of the valet when he spotted her shedding street dust onto the carpet, almost made the amount of effort Loki was putting into this worth it. In the multifaceted, opulent light of the hotel lobby, he could see how disgusting the girl really was. Her boots and bag were held together with brown string and her frayed clothes were stained colourless with the dirt of the streets, as was her skin and short, greasy hair. The fact that Algernon the mouse was riding on her shoulder completed the picture, and Loki suspected the only reason she was let in at all was because she was with the hotel's generous new guest.

He took the wallet from her pocket while it was unguarded, silenced her small noise of protest with a glare and pressed a note into the valet's hand as they passed. "Dinner for two I think, James," he informed the servant, feeling a sense of smug satisfaction as he returned the wallet to his pocket.

"Yessir. Brought up to your room, sir?" James asked, staring directly ahead of him as all good servants should. By contrast, Marylou was gawping at them both.

"As always. Close your mouth," he added to the woman as he reluctantly pressed a hand into her back and guided her towards the stairs; Loki didn't trust the metal boxes Midgardians used to carry themselves between floors, at least not until they reached a level of development almost equal to Asgard's own. "You look like a-"

"Don't finish that sentence, posh boy, or I _will_ stab you," she warned him.

Loki laughed shortly. "Oh, I would like to see you try. And the first thing you're going to do when we reach my rooms is bathe."

She moaned softly. "I can't remember the last time I had a bath."

"I would never have guessed that," Loki muttered, and then slightly louder he said, "and for the love of hygiene, burn those rags."

"I'll need scrappy clothes if you want me to tag Thor," she replied, "but I got kind of nicer ones in my bag, I guess I'll use those."

He felt her eyes, dark and sharp like her rodent's, on the back of his neck all the way up to his rooms, and used the excuse of holding the door open for her to move out of her eyeline. Instead, he watched her as she strolled into the room and whistled appreciatively, air hissing around the gap in her teeth.

"Fancy digs," she observed without looking at him, and Loki noticed how she took a little golden ornament from a side table and slipped it into her pocket. Old habits, he guessed. "Pretty fitting for a prince of Asgard."

He stiffened, and slammed the door shut behind him. His glamour was still up, so- "how did you know?" he demanded, striding towards her.

She took two steps back and hopped over a low-backed sofa. "Who else would you be? Posh, accent, wants to tail Thor and acts like a dick. I'm not thick, but if it's any consolation I doubt most people could put two and two together."

Now that it was futile, Loki let the illusion of his appearance melt away, as well as transforming the Midgard clothes into a green shift and leather tunic. "Good. Go and clean yourself, Marylou."

"You killed people," she said, "lots of people. You drilled that man's eye out, I saw it on the news."

Loki winced at the memory, which- like all of that week- was tinged with Tesseract blue and screaming flames that wrapped around his mind. "I wasn't myself," he said, fully aware of how futile it sounded. "And… and it was for the greater good. You needed order, and I was to be the one to bring it to you."

She lifted one shoulder. "Avoiding that last part, I've stabbed a few marks in my time, so I'm hardly one to judge. But you promise not to kill me?"

"Why would I?" Loki asked, a little testily. "What would I have to gain from murdering someone as unimportant as you?"

"Cheers," she muttered, dropping her bag on the floor. "Me 'n Algernon are going for a bath."

"I hope you have a wonderful time," Loki said sarcastically, and she stuck her middle finger up at him as she walked away. "The bathroom is through the other door."

"I knew that," she said quickly, veering off in the opposite direction.

Once he heard the sound of running water, Loki knelt down and untied the string holding her bag shut. There was indeed a change of clothes in there, although they were in an even worse state than what she was wearing. Face contorted in disgust, he pulled them aside and investigated the rest of the contents.

There was an old liquor bottle which she had half-filled with water, and a can of preserved food in a bag along with a few packets of mouse pellets. There was also a couple of scrunched-up, faded leaflets for various women's refuges, a battered paperback of a book he didn't recognise (not that he expected to), a box containing several small, twisted pieces of metal, a few plastic bags and a newspaper cutting about a museum opening somewhere in the city, which he guessed she noted as somewhere warm and dry to stay a few hours.

Whether or not she needed them to spy on his brother, Marylou would not be allowed to stay at a hotel in garments such as these. A maid had left slim paper volumes filled with glossy pictures on the table; he flicked through these until he found relatively acceptable garb and concentrated, and a few seconds later they shimmered into reality, folded neatly on the table.

Loki sat back and thought about the girl in his bath, about how her mouse was cleaner than she was and had more food in that bag, too. She didn't seem a trustworthy type, and he was actually considering taking Algernon hostage before he realised how foolish that sounded. _No_ , he thought, _payment and bribery is enough to ensure her good service._ Perhaps he could have hired a professional to do a better job, but then someone might have noticed. No, it was better to have a nobody working for him, so long as she could complete the task.

Loki, ever the impatient one as his mother used to say, waited a full ten minutes before flinging the door of the bathroom open and demanding Marylou hurry up. As he entered, she yelped and drew the waterproof curtain around the bath, then peered round the edge. Algernon was sat in the soap dish, washing itself with a tiny pink tongue.

"I need to talk to you," he said, "about what you plan to do."

"Bugger off and gimme a minute, then," she ordered him, making a shoo motion with a bubble covered hand. He waited outside the door and within thirty seconds she emerged, one hand holding a fluffy towel around her and the other carrying Algernon.

Now she was clean, he could see that her skin was pale and slightly burnt across the bridge of her nose. Her hair might have been bright red at one point, but it had since faded to a sort of peach colour and two inches of dark roots were showing. She was skinny, he could see all her bones, short enough for her to be hard to notice and had a not exactly pretty, but pointed and clever-looking face. With one eye still on him, she gently put the mouse down on a table and fished the box of metal pieces out of the mess he had made of her bag.

"What do you want me to find out, posh boy?" she asked, and he winced as she threaded one of the metal rings through her septum.

"What my brother is looking for on Earth," he said, watching as she stabbed another piercing through her bottom lip and began to put the rest in her ears. "He thinks petty Midgardian problems would bore his father." _I don't doubt they will bore me, too, but I must know anyway._

"I can dig that out," she told him, and flinched as there was a knock on the door.

"Come in, James," said Loki, reassuming his glamour as the valet entered with a silver platter holding two cloches. He deposited them on the dining table and bowed his head respectfully as he backed out of the room. "Help yourself."

She hesitated, then bolted across the room and knocked the lids of the dishes, ignoring the cutlery as she grabbed the food closest to her and started stuffing it into her mouth as if she had never seen it before. Loki watched her with a mixture of distaste and mild amusement, both of which increased as, halfway through eating, she fetched her rodent and brought him to the table, too.

"My experience of Midgardians is fortunately somewhat limited," he said aloud, "but I don't believe I've ever met one quite as uncivilised as you before."

"One of my many virtues," she said, through a mouthful of bread.

"Quite."

"Y'know?" she said to him, leaning back in her chair with a satisfied sigh, "I think I'm going off Marylou. What d'you think of Gwen?"

"I hardly-"

"I was talking to the mouse, posh boy," she cut him off, stroking the rat behind the ears.

 _How dare she?_ was Loki's first thought, quickly followed by _I've just been cut off in favour of a rodent_. But while half his mind was screaming at him to punish her for her insolence, the rest knew she was too valuable to kill- and besides, it had been a long time since anyone had spoken to him like that, and he almost enjoyed the change. He expected that the novelty would wear off soon, though.

"Speak to me like that again and you shall have a lot more to worry about than your name," he said, and walked towards her. He grabbed her by the wrist and she yelled in indignation, but the expression on his face silenced her. "You want your payment, girl, you do as I say."

"Except I don't," she said without a trace of nervousness, "do I? You're paying me to do what you can't do, so what makes you think you know more about tailing a guy than I do?" They glared at each other. "Let go of my arm, Loki."

It was the shock of her using his name that surprised him enough to do it. It had been such a long time since anyone had called him that… he mentally shook himself. Loss of his identity was a small price to pay for ruling Asgard, for doing a far better job, he thought, than his father had ever done.

"I shall return at dusk tomorrow evening," he informed her, "I expect you to have made some progress by then, Marylou."

"It's Gwen now, remember? And where are you going?"

"Home," he said, and disappeared from her view.

He materialised in a cave in the seaward cliffs of Asgard festooned with violet crystals identical to the one he had in his hand. He dropped the faded gem, assumed a glamour of a palace guard for until he reached his throne room, and gave thanks for the route between worlds that allowed him to return home immediately regardless of where he was on Midgard.

Nobody noticed the smooth transition between the shade of Odin and Loki taking its place; the illusion was designed in order to deflect all major decisions until he returned and could make them for himself. It was not until he had resolved all these matters, and was sat on his throne with a self-satisfied smirk, that he realised that the pocket of his robes was lighter than it should be.

Marylou- Gwen- whatever her name was- had stolen his wallet again.

 **A/N so I wanted another fic to bring the Civilian Chronicles (aka this, Finding Bucky and the surprisingly popular Coffee Run) up to three, and lo, in the space of a week this went from nothing but a title to 25,000 words and counting. Chapters will alternate POV between Loki and Gwen, and will probably average about 1500 words each. I hope you enjoy it, and please leave a review!**


	2. Chapter 2

Gwen lifted the clothes he had left for her curiously with her toe. They were fashionable- at least, she thought so- and not as bad as they could have been, she supposed. It was the morning after she had met the god- did he count as a god?- and she reluctantly pulled them on and tucked Algernon into the pocket of the cardigan. Ugh, she couldn't believe she was wearing one of those.

She took his wallet and, somewhat nervously, walked through the hotel and out of the lobby. Thankfully, her newly polished appearance meant she wasn't accosted, and if she was she at least had the key to his rooms. She followed her nose to the nearest Apple store and tapped a guy on the shoulder.

"Can I buy a laptop?" she asked him, "one of the fancy ones."

"What's your price range?" he asked, and she opened up the wallet and showed it to him. His eyes widened. "Well, ma'am, I suggest you follow me."

An hour later, she was back in the hotel room wrapped in a fluffy dressing gown with the shiny new laptop on her, well, on her lap. She knew the Avengers lived in the big tower uptown, she knew that, because of their celebrity status much of what they had done since the fall of SHIELD would be publicly known, and she also knew that Google would not be a line of investigation Loki would have thought to pursue.

Before, Gwen had only known of the Avengers what was printed on the front pages of newspapers she couldn't afford. As such, she had far fewer opinions of them than the rest of the world (who both loved and hated them); while they were out there saving innocent people, she was too busy trying to keep herself alive. Perhaps this, combined with her own lack of morals, was the reason she had very little problem with helping their arch enemy. Besides, it wasn't like he was trying to do anything malicious.

"What d'you think of him, Algernon?" she asked her mouse, who was scurrying around on the coffee table through a little maze she had made for him from objects scattered around the suite. "Bit of an arse, I thought, but at least he pays good." She yawned, closed the laptop and stretched, then decided to have a look round the room to see if he had left anything behind.

After two hours of tearing it apart, and having to explain to quite a concerned maid that everything was alright and she shouldn't be worried about the crashing noises, Gwen had to admit defeat in that the suite was utterly devoid of personal possessions aside from her own.

There was a knock on the door and she jumped, then reminded herself she was hardly going to get attacked here. Upon answering it, she saw it was James the valet.

"Is Mr Warwickson in?" he asked, peering through the crack in the door at her.

"Nah. Um, he said I could stay here, I dunno if…"

"He's still paying for the room, so that should be fine, miss."

"I'm not his… his mistress or anything," she said defensively, and James blinked.

"I never said you were, miss. I've brought up some dinner, but if you don't want it I can take it away."

"No, I want it." She opened the door wider to allow him to come in. "There's a mouse on the table, but he's with me."

"I'll try not to squash him, miss. How're you finding the rooms, miss?"

 _Miss, miss, miss_ , she thought, _I could get used to this_. "Very bourgeois," she told him, and he chuckled.

"You got the nicest suite we have, miss, so I suggest you make the most of it. You been over from England long?"

Loki was the last person she'd talked to and he hadn't brought up her accent, so this question came as a bit of a surprise. "Few years," she said, "what about you?"

"Moved here from Newcastle six months ago, miss."

"Never been." She was born and raised in East London. "Is it nice?"

"Very much so, miss. Would you like me to find you a cage for your pet mouse, miss?"

Algernon had never been in a cage before, like she had never been in a hotel before. "Yes please," she said, "one of the big ones, with tunnels and ladders and swings and stuff."

"I'll get right on that, miss. Enjoy your meal," he said, and vanished back out of the door only slightly less magically than when Loki had disappeared.

"Looks like we're both moving up in the world, Algernon," she said reflectively, pulling a tureen of soup towards her. "Look, this has got leaves and stuff on top of it. That's how posh it is. Cor." She tore off a hunk of bread, dipped it in the soup and moaned as she put it in her mouth. "I'm gonna have to work for more evil villains, because this stuff is too good to pass up."

When she had finished gorging herself, she wiped her fingers on the tablecloth and leant back, closing her eyes. With Algernon curled up on his usual spot in the nook between her collarbones, with the traffic noises drifting in through the window working like a lullaby, she could feel herself drifting off…

"Wake up."

She opened one eye to glower at him. "What d'you want?" she asked grumpily.

"To know about my brother, as I told you- or had your stunted Midgardian brain forgotten?" he added nastily.

"No need to be rude," she said, "him and the other Avengers've become a private sub-company of Stark Industries, managed by Maria Hill. They liaise with various international governments on matters of security and are also…" she screwed her face up as she remembered what the website said. "Working to eliminate the last vestiges of HYDRA and their illegal scientific experiments. That last bit not many people know about, but lots of people reckon they're looking for something."

"What?"

"Dunno, but I don't think it's originally HYDRA. Oh, they're like SHIELD's evil tapeworm, by the way, and SHIELD are the people who helped blow you up last time you were here."

"The man in the black leather coat?" Loki asked, leaning against the wall with his arms folded. He was wearing his proper face and Asgard clothes this time, all green and black leather that fitted tightly to his form.

"That sounds like Fury, he's the director. Also dead, apparently."

Loki nodded. "I won't pretend to be upset by that."

"You are such a dick," she told him lightly.

"I endeavour to please. I hope you are proud of yourself for pickpocketing me again, sneak-thief."

She chuckled. "Very much so. Where did you get the money, anyway? I can't imagine there being an exchange centre in Asgard."

"I conjured it," he told her, and she sighed heavily.

"Do you have any idea how bad that is for inflation? Have you learned _nothing_ from the Weimar Republic?"

"Gwen," he said levelly, "I have precisely no interest in Midgardian history."

"You should do, because then you might pick up a thing or two," she told him.

"And how would a pauper like you know?"

"Actually," she said coolly, "I have a degree in history. Not a particularly good one, but a degree nonetheless."

"Which means…?"

"I spent a lot of my life learning about it."

"You went to school?" he asked, surprise in his voice.

"Amazingly, yeah. The degree I got from OU, but I actually made it all the way to the first week of sixth form before… before dropping out."

"You tell me this like you think I care," Loki smirked.

"I don't give a damn if you do or not, it's just nice to talk to someone who doesn't have a tail. Is this the honeymoon suite?"

"Yes," said Loki, "are you hoping that someone might think you are my mistress?"

"Don't," she said sharply, voice rising. "Don't joke about that, it's not funny."

Loki cocked his head to one side. "It appears I've hit a nerve," he purred, and she looked down as her cheeks flushed.

"You're adopted," she mumbled, which only made him laugh. Still staring at her hands, she listened to his footsteps as he walked past her.

"You haven't slept in the bed?" he asked.

"Don't like 'em."

"Every time you open your mouth you become more of an enigma, mouse girl."

"My name," she said, "is Gwen. And a guy who's supposed to be dead isn't really in a position to talk about enigmas. Is there anything else you wanted, posh boy?"

"Oh, there are so many things," he murmured, and she looked up to raise an eyebrow at him. "But none of them concern you. I trust you are comfortable?"

"I thought you didn't care about me?" she asked, relaxing again as conversation moved into safer territories.

"I care that you get the job done."

"Y'know," she said, "you don't strike me as the evil mastermind you're supposed to be. A humongous pillock, yes, but not evil. I can't imagine you taking over New York."

"It was never the original plan," he admitted, "and I've achieved what I wanted to anyway."

"What happened to you on Asgard, after they took you back? What made you stop wanting to kill everything on sight?"

"That, my darling Gwen," he said, "is a story for another time. After all, if you are to keep your history secret then I should be able to do the same for mine."

"If you say so," she said, "though yours is probably a lot more interesting."

"I don't doubt it," he said, "I shall return in a week to-"

"See what I found out, yeah. I didn't think you'd be making social visits."

"So glad you understand," Loki smiled. "Good night, mouse."

"You too, posh boy."

 **A/N bonus chapter because this got so much interest so quickly. Thank you- yes you, specifically, not the other ones- for your support!**


	3. Chapter 3

Loki was surprised to find that he was actually looking forward to seeing Gwen again, despite having to go to Midgard in order to do so. He put it down to the promise of knowledge about his brother, who as ever seemed distracted during the times he actually was in court, and distracted himself with the politics of the Cree.

Any positive emotions he may have had regarding the girl, however, disappeared when he entered their rooms in the hotel.

"What in the name of Asgard is that monstrosity?" he exclaimed, pointing at a shiny, horribly coloured cluster of tubing and cubing sat on a side table.

"Algernon's new home," Gwen informed him, walking in from the bathroom. She was wearing a silk robe almost short enough to qualify as a shirt, and he could see all the bruises and scratches running up her legs and over her knobbly knees. His favourite handmaiden came to mind again as he glanced her up and down, but he pushed the thought aside. "D'you like it?"

"About as much as I like being violently tortured," he replied, "get rid of it."

"No!" she softened a little. "I'll move it into a corner so you don't have to look at it, is that better?"

"You're too kind," Loki said sarcastically, and she beamed at him. "And what is the point of having a cage for that rat if you don't use it?"

"Mouse," she corrected him again, stroking the rodent in her hand with her thumb. "Hold onto him while I get changed."

"I don't-" but before he could finish his sentence, the pest was in his hand and she was slamming the door shut of the bedroom. He brought Algernon up to eye level and glared at him. "Don't even think about it," he warned him.

A few minutes later, she emerged in neither the clothes he had made for her, nor the ones she had with her when they first met. They were black and ripped and tight, and made her look dangerous to approach. Which, Loki supposed, would be useful for an urchin.

"So," she said, taking Algernon back off him and tucking him in her breast pocket, "I haven't actually found out anything you might find interesting, but the chef for Stark Tower is a very friendly woman and really quite partial to an evening brandy, if you catch my drift."

"What makes you think a servant will know what he is doing?" Loki asked sceptically, and she rolled her eyes.

"First, we don't have servants anymore due to the gradual erosion of the class system, and second, nobody keeps their mouth shut over dinner. And besides, little old ladies know everything."

"I'll have to take your word for that," Loki decided, "but if I arrive again to a lack of news then you will find yourself without a benefactor."

"Relax, posh boy, you won't. And stay a while this time, will you? I get lonely up here on my own."

"Need someone to keep the bed warm?" he offered, and aside from the effect he expected her comment to give her face slipped and for a moment she looked… scared. "Gwen?"

"Don't say stuff like that," she snapped, mask returning, "please."

"Why?"

"Because it's lewd," she told him, and he raised an eyebrow. "Oh, don't, okay? You didn't seem over the moon when I asked you about going all crazy take-over-the-world villain, either, and I'm not pressing you for details."

"For which I'm grateful," he said, "although most people felt they already knew the reasons for my actions."

"And did they?"

"Not all of them," he said, "but I can't help that they're not clever enough to understand."

She laughed. "You are unbelievably arrogant, y'know."

"You're not exactly reticent yourself," he retorted.

"Oh, touché. I saved you some dinner."

"I've already eaten," Loki informed her, and she frowned.

"I go to all this effort," she said, and despite himself he laughed.

"I'm curious," he said, "is your name still Gwen?"

"To you it is," she explained, "to the chef, I'm Annie and the security guards think I'm… what was it, Algernon? Trisha, that was it. Why, is your name still Loki?"

"To you it is," he replied, and she gave him a look. "To everyone else, I am Odin."

Her beady eyes widened in surprise. "That's… oh. Is he-"

"Still alive," Loki assured her.

"Well, for you that's impressive."

"I am not about to commit patricide, mouse."

She sat down, curled up on one end of the sofa. "Did you know, in ancient Rome the punishment for patricide was to be sewn into a sack with a snake, a cockerel and a dog and chucked into a river?"

"How barbaric," Loki replied as he sat down across from her, and she shrugged.

"The Republic was the peak of civilisation for centuries, so I wouldn't go as far as to say barbaric," she said. "It took centuries to reach such a level of democracy in any country, let alone on a global scale."

"What happened?" Loki asked, curiosity getting the better of him.

"Armies became loyal to people and not the empire, Caesar accidentally became dictator for life, there was a bit of a mix-up over his will and bam, five hundred years of emperors." She waved her hands as she talked, and her dark eyes glittered with the same excitement Loki had seen in other men on the battlefield. It was strange, how the stories of dead men could bring so much life to her.

"He… accidentally became dictator?"

"Yeah, it's really funny actually. What happened is-" she broke off. "Wait, why do you want to know about boring Midgardian history?"

 _I don't,_ Loki thought, _but I like to watch you talk about it._ Midgardian women's fascination with what he thought to be dull things intrigued him; Thor's woman, Jane he remembered her name was, he remembered babbling about science during the short period of time he had been around her, and she had been awake. But with Gwen, it amused him as much as Jane had annoyed him. She was an acutely entertaining person to be around.

She snapped her fingers. "Oi, posh boy. Answer my question already."

He blinked. "I… am intrigued as to how someone can accidentally gain control of an empire."

"Two things you need to know about humanity," she said, "one is that our entire civilisation, everything we are today, is built on a series of fuck-ups; two is that we don't like being told what to do, me included. Unless you pay me large sums of money. Now it's your turn to tell me something."

"What would you like to know?" he asked.

"Ideally, why you're so worried about your brother when you're supposed to hate his guts, but that would probably take several hours of therapy sessions to explain, and I'm not emotionally prepared for that. So…" she chewed her lip, making the piercing twist. "How's Asgard?"

Loki half-smiled. "Infinitely better than here."

"You'll have to show me some time," she said, "is being king fun?"

"More so than my brother thinks, it seems."

"Well," she said, "you know what they say about crowns."

"Enlighten me," Loki smiled.

"They beg for madness." She gave him an uncomfortably piercing look. "And you are an interestingly abnormal man."

"I am no man," he said, "I am a god."

"Can't gods be mad? Surely there's a deity somewhere that's the manifestation of insanity."

"And I would love to meet them," Loki admitted. There was a bottle of wine on the table; he poured two glasses and passed one to her. "But they certainly aren't taking my throne from me." _Even if it isn't technically mine._

"What are you the god of, Loki?" she asked, not relenting with that dagger-like stare of hers.

"Mischief," he answered honestly, and she threw back her head and laughed.

"Of _course_ you are. Well, you've managed a lot more than mischief in the last few years, posh boy."

"I am aware," he said, "and not all of it was voluntary."

She sipped at her glass. "The plot thickens."

"As does yours," he replied, "it seems the more one reveals, the less the other knows about them."

She raised her glass. "Not bad for a sneak thief and a mischief maker."

"I am inclined to agree, little mouse."

"For the last time," she said exasperatedly, "my name is Gwen. Not that I expect someone as bourgeois as you to make the effort of remembering some poor povvy girl's name."

"Bourgeois?" Loki asked. It was not a word they had on Asgard.

"The rich, the elite, the disproportionately wealthy. The spoiled brats of the universe," she finished, and there was a slight note of disgust in her voice.

"You think I'm _spoiled_?" he asked, setting his glass down.

"Oh, undoubtedly."

"Do you have any idea how much I've suffered, girl-"

"Yeah," she shot back at him, "but I bet, even in your Asgard cell, a murderer like you was still treated better than the poor kid who tried to steal some food. Have you ever been so hungry you can feel the empty in your gut, Loki? Not for a few days while you were in exile, for years, for every waking moment of your damn life." She was stood now, and shouting at him. "When was the last time you were kicked out of a place because you couldn't afford to be clean, when was the last time people with enough money would walk past the cardboard box that was your home and _spit_ on you, because to them you're not even worth enough to be human? Huh? Don't you dare preach to me about how you've suffered, when this is the first time in my life I can remember being clean, and not so hungry it hurts."

"My father left me to die!" he roared back, standing up himself and squaring off with her. Who was she to tell him what pain was? "I am a creature of ice, and monsters found me and put me to roast to watch me scream for family I didn't have who would never hear me, I was tortured until all I could remember was pain, and you expect me to pity you because you've missed a few meals? If I had a life as low as yours, none of that would have happened to me!"

"No," she retorted, "because you would have been unimportant enough to kill and be done with it. You are a king, Loki, and I am a beggar dependent on your mercy. Tell me, who's worse off?"

If he struck her, it would just further reinforce her point, and for once his silver tongue couldn't think of a response; she had played him perfectly.

"Count your blessings, King of Asgard," she said in a much softer voice, "I think you'll be surprised."

"Count them yourself," he snapped, and grabbed the crystal in his pocket.

 **A/N in this chapter you can see me putting my Classics A level to good use. I think this fic was born out of having read so many other OC-centric ones where the OC walks down an alleyway and gets cornered by some shady people, leading to her either being rescued by an Avenger or manifesting her powers and promptly blacking out. I've got nothing against that trope, but I like the idea of the OC being the shady one for a change.**


	4. Chapter 4

Two weeks passed, and although Gwen carried on digging for stuff about Thor, Loki remained absent. She was also shocked to find she was slightly guilty about this; perhaps, she thought, she should have left the revelation of her Marxist tendencies for later than the third meeting. But she was nothing if not practical and since their argument would not be helped by mulling over it, she continued to do what he was (hopefully still) paying her to do.

The beefier of the two Asgardians was such a surprisingly hard person to tag that she ended up abandoning all her other jobs and, effectively, disappearing off the face of the planet. She was pleasantly surprised to discover that her presence from New York's underworld was actually missed; she appeared to be a more popular tail than she thought, although she had always thought she was the best. Walking through alleyways she saw coded messages scratched onto bricks, whispers behind hands of people trying to find her.

It was late one night, and finally plying the chef with alcohol had worked; she knew what the Avengers were looking for. There was no small amount of pride growing inside of her and she practically skipped up the stairs to her hotel room, faded pink hair flying out behind her. She pulled out the key and unlocked the door, dropped Algernon on the side table and shrieked when she saw the figure standing in front of her.

"Jesus Christ, posh boy!" she panted, clutching a hand to her heart. His lip curled in amusement. "You finally decided to show your face, then. What changed your mind- or did you just stop sulking?"

Loki ignored that question. He was like a cat, Gwen realised, in that he only paid attention to her when it suited him. He was proud like a cat too, and gave out an aura of being cleverer than everyone else in the room. Whether this was true or not remained to be seen. "What news do you have of my brother?"

"They're looking for your sceptre," she said, pulling off her jacket. "HYDRA got hold of it. They haven't had any reports of it being used, but they've definitely got it. They're working their way through all the HYDRA bases in between their other jobs."

Loki nodded. "It's not my sceptre," he said quietly, "it was given to me."

"Who by?" she asked curiously.

"Thanos."

"I have no idea who that is," she told him.

"Which is the only reason I gave you his name."

"Fair," she acceded. "D'you want it back, then?"

"I already have everything I desire," he said, "the sceptre would just arouse suspicion if I possessed it again."

She nodded. "D'you want me to keep tagging him?"

"Yes. Just… tell me whether or not he's safe," said Loki, "or if not safe, then at least not in mortal peril. It is not the sort of information he would choose to burden his father with, after all."

"So you're really doing this because you care about him," she said.

"Stop smiling like that, mouse," he ordered her, but to no avail.

"It's really cute," she grinned, and Loki rolled his eyes and cursed beneath his breath. "You can say thank you any time now."

"For what?" he asked innocently, and her expression changed to a scowl. "Thank you, Gwen, for being a clever little sneak thief."

"You are very welcome," she said, "oh, and I was doing some reading about you online, right? And there's this bit on your wiki page where it's just all the scholars arguing about who you are-"

"Where is this going?" he asked coolly.

"Bear with me- and it gets to the end of the paragraph, right, and it says "Blah Blah whatserface concluded that no conclusion can be made about Loki." She grinned at him, and as she saw his expression her face dropped into a frown. "Aw, c'mon. That's funny."

"If you say so."

There was an awkward silence, the kind generated by two very proud people who are both refusing to bow to each other. "I'm sorry for yelling at you," she said eventually.

"You struck me as far too stubborn to apologise," Loki told her as she hopped into a chair.

"Yeah, but you're like, really powerful and could break me with one finger. I figured it wouldn't be a good idea to have you pissed off at me."

"You're cleverer than you look," he said.

"That was very nearly a compliment, and I think I'll take it. Besides, motherly instincts mean I'm a lot better at dealing with tantrums than most people my age."

Loki stared at her. "Motherly instincts... You have a _child_?"

 _Ah, shit_ , she thought, _didn't mean to say that out loud._ "Technically, yes. She's ten now."

"But you don't look older than…"

"Twenty-five," she finished for him, looking down. "Going on forty. My parents were pretty conservative, so they wouldn't let me have an abortion, and they couldn't bear to keep her around either." She felt like she shouldn't be telling an alien homicidal maniac this, but carried on regardless. "I gave her my name."

"Sorry?"

"I named her Lucy, and stopped going by it myself in the hope she would make something better of the name than I did." She could feel Loki's eyes on her, and found that the easiest thing at this point was to keep talking. "First and last time I ever had sex. I told my boyfriend and he refused to have anything to do with it, which was just the icing on the cake."

"Is this why you don't sleep in a bed?" Loki asked, and she couldn't make out the emotion in his voice. Disgust, maybe. Disdain. Pity.

"Before then, beds were supposed to be safe. I can't think like that anymore," she confessed, and straightened her shoulders a little. "O'course, she's probably better off without me. I ran away, did a load of drugs, _sold_ a load of drugs to pay rent, and ended up homeless when I gave 'em up. It was either become a sneak thief, as you so charmingly put it, or a hooker." She did a little mock-bow in her seat. "Now will you stop making jokes about me being your mistress?"

"Where is she now?" Loki asked, "your daughter, do you know-"

"Last time I checked, she got adopted by a family in Windsor, of all places. She knows she's adopted apparently, but we've never met- thank God, I'd probably corrupt her." She faltered. "Please stop looking at me like I'm something to be pitied."

He blinked. "Well, your story is somewhat tragic."

"Not really," she said, "it happens to a lot of people and besides, it's all my own fault. Feel like paying me back with your own tragic backstory?"

He laughed, a lot more softly and less mockingly than how he usually did. "Perhaps another time."

"At least give me a teaser," she pressed him, "I just unwillingly poured my heart out to you, posh boy."

"It wasn't exactly unwilling," he argued.

"Well, it weren't voluntary either. It just sort of… came out. Like word vomit."

"Charming," he said, "and I already have. You know I was tortured."

"Oh, yeah. I'd forgotten about that," she admitted, "got lost in the heat of the moment, y'know?"

"You are a curious person, Gwen."

"If you say so," she said. "Question."

Loki waved an idle hand in a gesture to continue.

"How old are you?"

"In Midgardian years," he said, "one-thousand and forty-nine."

She raised an eyebrow. "Bloody hell."

"Indeed."

"And you still act like a stuck-up kid."

Loki cocked his head to one side. "It's like you're asking for me to kill you," he said, and she laughed.

"Well, I've met worse if that makes you feel any better."

"Like who?"

"My ex-boyfriend, for one," she suggested, which made him chuckle. "Nothing like retrospect to make you realise how much of an arse someone is."

He nodded in agreement. "I… may have spoken out of turn, the last time I saw you."

Her jaw dropped. "Holy shit, is this an _apology_?!"

"Don't push it," he warned her, as she clapped her hands together delightedly.

"Oh, man. If I had a calendar, I would absolutely be marking today down. Wow. You actually nearly said sorry. Wow."

"I can see you are never going to be over it," Loki said wryly, and she nodded enthusiastically. "Wonderful. I should leave before I stoop any lower."

"Wait," she said, "you don't… think I'm a slut, or anything?"

"Of course I don't," he said, "someone in the room has probably had far too many lovers, but it certainly isn't you."

"Ha! Nicely put, posh boy, although I have been informed there's no such thing as too much sex. And thank you, too."

"Consider yourself indebted to me," he replied, "I daresay I'll do something I'll need forgiving for at some point in the near future."

"Probably," she smiled, "haven't you got a kingdom to rule?"

"I shall see you in a week, Gwen."

"I look forward to it."

 **A/N bonus chapter because I'm trying to sort out my posting schedule. This will have fortnightly updates from now on, so it alternates with Fidning Bucky. Enjoy, and please leave a review x**


	5. Chapter 5

A month passed, and four visits to Midgard later Loki found that he quite liked Gwen. It was certainly refreshing to have someone who didn't bow and scrape to him, and her manner in this regard reminded him of his mother, whom missing felt like a physical wound whenever he thought of her. But Gwen was alive, albeit barely when he first met her, and unlike Frigga she had absolutely no respect for him.

Meanwhile, the longer he knew her, the more _his_ respect for _her_ grew. It was mainly because she was quite literally the only person he could be himself around, and he would have been inclined to like a Jotunn if it were to call him by his true name at this point. But a Jotunn he could not have been able to tolerate for more than a few minutes (besides himself, of course) while she had just enough redeeming qualities to balance out her many despicable ones.

He knew many Asgardian women who would have died of grief if their child had been taken away from them, let alone at such a young age, and had to grant that she was hardy for a mortal. Not only that, but she was surprisingly clever in certain (mainly illicit) areas, and she was only as proud as he was. She was inarguably rude, had questionable habits and wasn't anywhere near the attractive women he was used to, but overall she was excellent company- for a Midgardian.

The realm had earned his grudging respect when a handful of its more colourful inhabitants had managed to best _him,_ which was why he permitted himself to like her- perhaps they weren't all as useless as the common average. He came to feel that paying for her upkeep was not enough in return for the information she brought him about his brother, as well as her general companionship.

For once, she was in when he appeared in the hotel rooms, and he was glad of it. "Get a coat," he said brusquely, and she scooped up her mouse as she stood up.

"Why?"

"Because I believe England is quite cold at this time of year."

Her face slackened, and she glanced at his Midgardian garb. "Loki, how-"

"I have my methods," he said. In reality, he had asked Heimdall to find who he was looking for, and when the gatekeeper had asked why the apparent palace guard was interested, he said it was on behalf of one of Thor's mortal friends. "Are you ready?"

"Yeah, but-"

"Take my arm," he said, crystal in his other hand. "And hold on tight."

She did as she was told and the walls flickered and warped around them; Loki felt the now-familiar jolt in the pit of his stomach as they were dragged across space to the crystal cave. When the world came to a halt, Gwen staggered away into a corner and he heard retching.

"If you're quite finished," he said distastefully, "we need to move on."

"Where are we?" she asked, wiping her mouth with her sleeve.

"Asgard. It was easier to go via this route than straight to England." He yanked another crystal out of the dwindling supply on the wall. There was enough for a good century's worth of weekly travel for just one person, but no more; hence why the place was a secret, the resource was so finite that other routes were far easier. That, and they needed magic to be used. "Come here, it's easier the second time round."

She nodded, blue-tinged lips pressed tightly together, and gripped his arm again. The cave vanished and they world reassumed itself in the shape of a cloudy, lonely playpark. A few children in bright, puffy clothes ran around the warped metal constructions, and beside him Gwen bent down with her hands on her knees.

"You lied about it being easier," she groaned, and Loki rubbed her back between the shoulderblades.

"It'll pass in a couple minutes," he said, and she gave him a thumbs-up. "She's not here yet."

"I know," Gwen murmured, "I'm just gonna sit on that bench over there until the world stops spinning."

He followed her to the seat and stood beside her, wearing his old Midgardian glamour should any parents recognise him. He watched the mortal spawn- he made a note not to call them that aloud while Gwen was around- climb and slide and swing, wondering what the appeal was in them. Then another set of parents arrived with two more kids, one tiny and the other slightly taller, with a pale pointed face and dark eyes.

"Gwen," he said quietly, and her head shot up. "Is that…"

"Yeah," she murmured, "that's Lucy."

The elder of the two girls went and sat on a swing by herself, kicking herself into a swinging motion by the heels of her muddy shoes. Next to him, Gwen pressed her hands to her mouth and he heard a muffled sob.

"She's okay," she whispered, "oh my god, she's okay."

"Go and talk to her," he said, and she shook her head.

"And get arrested? Not likely."

"Her…" he was going to say parents, but thought better of it. "The adults with her are paying attention to the younger one, and no one else will care. Go."

"But-"

"I haven't gone through all this effort for you to sit here and cry, mouse," he told her coolly, "go or I'll leave you stranded here."

She took a deep breath. "Look after Algernon for me," she said shakily, and Loki reluctantly took the animal and dropped it in his pocket. She went and sat on the swing next to Lucy, and although he could just hear their voices he couldn't make out the words.

Ten minutes later, when Loki was bored out of his skull and staring up at the uniform grey sky, Gwen came and sat back next to him. "Well?" he asked, without looking at her.

"She wants to be an actress," she said quietly, "and her favourite singer is Taylor Swift, she likes purple and sour sweets, and, um, and she has a pet mouse called Angelina."

Loki raised his head to look at her. "The irony astounds."

She nodded. "She goes to ballet on Thursday, and theatre club on Saturday, she's a Hufflepuff, her favourite book is _The Wee Free Men_ and… she's perfect, Loki, she's _perfect_."

She didn't seem all that much to him, but he supposed beauty was in the eye of the beholder as ever. "Does she know who you are?"

She shook her head. "Can I go home now, please?"

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

He handed her back Algernon and they flitted from the park to the cave back to the hotel, where Gwen curled up in a chair and stared at the wall, the only movement being her finger running across her pet's back. Loki sat and watched her, and after half an hour her eyes shifted to him.

"Thank you," she said in a hoarse voice, "I guess you aren't as much of a twat as I thought."

"I shall take that as a compliment," he said. "And don't expect the same kindness from me in the future." Being nice was tiring, he had got nothing from it, and Gwen was now nowhere near her usual self- in short, she had become another snivelling Midgardian. Typical.

"I don't think I can do that again," she whispered.

"You are under no obligation to."

"It hurt." She closed her eyes. "How did it feel when your mother died?"

Loki didn't recall ever mentioning Frigga to her, but she must have heard while tailing Thor. "Like every instance of pain in my life had returned all at once," he said, "and every one from the future. There was a moment of choice, like I thought I could opt out of it, but then…" he didn't need to finish; they both already knew. Perhaps her mood was acceptable, in the circumstances. "Mouse," he said gently, "sleep."

"No," she mumbled.

"Why not?"

"Because when I wake up nobody'll be there." She buried her face in her hands, and Loki found he could not remain silent. She was still Gwen, after all. Still the impudent, morally grey woman he liked to have around.

"I will be."

She fell asleep on the sofa within minutes, and Loki quickly began to regret his decision. The moving picture screen on the wall held no interest for him, nor did the reading material supplied by the hotel. With a lack of anything better to do, he went to Gwen's small pile of possessions and picked up her battered old book. _Catch-22_ , the cover declared, and with very low expectations he opened it to the first page.

%

When she woke up ten hours later, Loki had read the book back-to-back twice and felt like he had been somewhat underestimating Midgardians his entire life. Not much, of course, but a little.

Gwen propped herself up on her elbows and looked blearily at him. "You liked it?" she asked, nodding at the book.

"I… it's very odd," he said, and she sniggered her usual snigger.

"Among other things."

"This is really your favourite book?" he asked her.

"Yeah, what's wrong with it?"

"Nothing, it just… it's very odd," he finished lamely.

"So you said." She yawned. "I didn't expect you to actually stay. You're being uncharacteristically nice to me, y'know."

"Don't expect it to last," he warned her, "and I want you to return to your work today."

"Yeah yeah yeah, let me wake up first. Don't suppose your nice streak'll stretch to making me a cup of tea…"

"You should be so lucky," Loki smirked, standing up. "I shall see you next week."

He just caught sight of her mocking salute before she and the rest of the room disappeared.

 **A/N day late, sorry. FTR Gwen's entire (very small) library consists of books set during various historical events, and Cicero.**


	6. Chapter 6

Lucy Ward.

Seeing her had infinitely multiplied all of Gwen's suppressed feelings towards her daughter. Love and loss, all bundled up and strong enough to burst out of her ribcage, made it difficult to think about anything else. But you couldn't survive on the streets if you were a lovestruck fool. Gwen held thoughts of her daughter back, only allowing them to come forward in the small hours of the night when there was nothing else to trouble her, and meanwhile carried on with the job at hand.

Miraculously, her chef friend had managed to get her an interview to work in the Avengers Tower as a maid. _Posh boy's gonna think this is hilarious_ , she thought gloomily, as she removed her piercings one morning while dressed in the smartest clothes she had ever worn.

The problem was that she actually had a bit of a soft spot for the Norse god. She had been a drug dealer for a solid six years, after all, she was hardly in a position to maintain a moral high ground over him, and that wasn't even counting the couple of people who had been on the receiving end of her switchblade. Loki was arrogant and privileged, yes, but he also had wit to match her own and, she was forced to admit, wasn't too unattractive when he wasn't wearing the wan face of an ordinary man. And he had shown her Lucy, which not only meant she was forever in his debt, but also hinted at a nicer side he probably wouldn't willingly admit to.

On the other hand, he could be- and often was- infuriatingly up himself. It wasn't just that she was tired of hearing how tiny her Midgardian brain was, it was that he thought he was better than everyone else in the world, just because he was a king- and not even a proper one! He was just pretending to be someone else!

Gwen blinked, and realised that while she had been thinking her legs had carried her all the way through New York to the lobby of the Tower without her noticing. She had had to leave Algernon behind, which meant this was the first time she had gone somewhere without him, but he was hardly going to endear her to her maybe-employers.

A little nervously, she walked up to the desk and coughed. A smiling woman with a headset looked up at her.

"Can I help you?"

"Annie, um, Smith for a job interview?"

The woman nodded. "Miss Potts will be with you shortly."

 _Potts?!_ That wasn't part of the plan.

"Miss Smith! Lovely to meet you, Mrs Pleasant's told me so much about you."

Gwen jumped and spun round to see a slim strawberry blonde woman offering her hand to her, a tablet tucked into the nook of her other arm. She shook it and followed Potts into an elevator, which took them up several floors to an office with one wall made up entirely of glass windows that looked out onto the Manhattan skyline. Gwen, who was mortally afraid of heights, quickly turned her back to it and took the seat Potts offered her.

"So Annie," she smiled, "any particular reason you want to work in the Avengers tower?"

Gwen suspected this was a trick question. "Uh," she said eloquently, "to be honest, ma'am, I don't really care that I'll be working for a bunch of superheroes, I've never really been bothered about that stuff. I just want to work for a company that has an excellent reputation outside of its high-profile owner." _Oh, I'm good._

Pepper looked very relieved. "Right answer," she said, "between you and me, I do _not_ want to admit the amount of restraining orders I've had to issue to people who've applied to work here."

"Miss Potts," a smooth disembodied voice said, and for the second time in ten minutes Gwen jumped. "Mr Stark would like to speak to you."

Pepper closed her eyes for a moment. "Tell him I'm busy, Jarvis."

"Of course."

The CEO looked back at Gwen. "Sorry about that," she said, "now, about your qualifications-"

"PEPPER!"

"I am sorry Miss Potts," said Jarvis the omnipresent voice, "I did try to tell him."

A short man with an intensely trimmed beard had emerged from the lift and strolled into Pepper's office. "You're making a staffing decision _without_ me?" he asked, hand on his chest to display how insulted he felt.

"Tony," said Pepper wearily, "it's just a maid."

"Yeah," Stark replied, " _my_ maid."

"With your track record, darling, all your maids are men."

"I'm offended you would even think me capable of this," said Stark, walking round and leaning on the back of her chair. "I'm in a committed monogamous relationship," he informed Gwen.

She nodded, while trying not to panic. There was no way they would know why she was really here, right? _Right_?!

"Tony," said Pepper, "go play in the lab with Bruce."

"Fine," huffed the trillionaire, and swanned off back into the lift.

"Again," said Pepper, straightening the files on her desk, "sorry about… him. So, Annie, why do you want to work as one of our service staff?"

 _I actually resent the concept of me being subservient to all of you purely on the basis that you are more affluent than me,_ she thought, but obviously didn't say it aloud. She gave suitably shoe-licking answers to all of the questions and made it through the interview without incident.

"Now," said Potts, "do you have any questions about your wages or anything like that?"

Gwen suddenly realised that she hadn't even thought about getting paid for working at the Tower. "Uh," she said, "… no…"

"Excellent! We'll email you in the next couple of days, but I think I can say I'll be very glad to have you on our team!" Potts trilled, and Gwen nodded.

%

"I'm gonna get _paid_ Algernon! For a job which I hate on principle, but still. That's an extra wage, on top of what the posh boy gives me. I might actually be able to afford to buy stuff for myself."

"What are you prattling on about now?" said a smooth voice, and Gwen turned to glare at Loki as he sauntered into the room.

"I got a job in the Avengers Tower as their maid, thought it might make sneaking about there easier."

Loki raised an eyebrow. "I somehow cannot imagine you mastering the concept of being seen and not heard in order to be a serving girl, mouse."

"Believe it or not," she said coolly, "I'm not thick enough to rant at my employers." She shuddered a little at the last word, hating that it meant she was tied down. It felt different with Loki; he needed her as much as she needed him, whereas she would just be another termite in the anthill of Stark Industries.

"I shall try to," he said with a crooked smile, "any news on my brother?"

"Somewhere in Brazil, I think." She yawned, and started unbuttoning her blouse. "Turn around while I get changed."

"Must I?"

"Oi. We've talked about this."

Loki obediently turned to face the wall. "Do they suspect anything?"

"Why would they? Everyone thinks you're dead," she reminded him, pulling on her jeans. "How's Asgard?"

"Asgardian."

"Thank you for sharing such an important piece of information with me," she said scathingly, and he chuckled. "Okay, you can turn back around now. Does Asgard have mice?"

"Yes," he said, "they're generally considered to be pests."

She gave him a sunny smile. "Well, we are."

He laughed properly. "At least you're self-aware."

"You could learn a thing or two from me, posh boy." She shrugged on her jacket and sat down to lace up her boots.

"Where are you going?"

"Out to get drunk," she lied smoothly, "I think I'm allowed to celebrate, don't you?"

He shrugged. "So long as it doesn't affect your tailing ability."

"It won't, Loki, don't worry. Don't wait up for me," she added, fishing Algernon out of his cage.

"I wasn't planning to."

%

Gwen had never been able to afford admission to the Cloisters before, a museum in north Manhattan that had been built to look like old European castles, but she had often camped out in the park it was situated in and had spent hours staring hungrily at the old stone walls, wondering what was inside.

"I am such a nerd," she murmured to Algernon in her pocket, "for the sake of my dignity, he must never know this is how I spend my free time." The museum had everything; art and gardens and ancient things that glittered lazily in their glass cases. A few elderly couples gave the pink-haired girl with threatening clothes and countless piercings slightly suspicious looks, but she paid them no heed with her nose pressed against the screens shielding the exhibits, eyes poring over them and the placards that explained what they were.

She was so absorbed she didn't notice the god disguised as a man watching her from shadowy corners, a funny expression on his face.

 **A/N aye look another character from the MCU actually turned up. AMAZING**


	7. Chapter 7

"Why Earth?" Gwen asked him one evening, through a mouthful of greasy food. "If you hate us so much, why try and take over here?"

He watched Algernon scamper around the debris on the table and wondered what to say. "You could do so much better under my rule," he ended up telling her.

"If you say so, but that could apply anywhere. Why _here_?"

"Asgard was unavailable," he said coolly, and she raised a disbelieving eyebrow at him.

"You really don't strike me as the type to settle for second-best, posh boy. You can tell me," she assured him, "who else am I gonna blab to? And it's your turn to backstory, anyway."

She made a surprisingly compelling argument. "I never truly believed the plan to take over Midgard would work," he sighed, "if it did then that would hardly have been a bad thing, but it wasn't hard to guess what would happen if it didn't. I had spent years trying to claw myself back to Asgard… being taken there as prisoner seemed far easier."

"You expect me to believe you thought that far ahead?" she asked incredulously, "I know you're smart, but dude. That's not a plan."

"It was the most preferable of two back-up plans," he replied, "all I knew was I somehow had to gain the attention of my supposed brother in order to get home. And in the darkest corners of the universe, there are whispers of a…" _not a man,_ he thought. "… of a creature capable of immense power."

"Thanos," she guessed, and he nodded.

"I was desperate enough to turn to the bastard's help, and for some reason I trusted him." He laughed bitterly. "He didn't believe I wouldn't double-cross him, all he saw was the spoiled prince of Asgard who had been spurned by his father."

"That makes two of us," grinned Gwen, and faltered as she saw his expression. "Right, not funny, sorry. Carry on."

"If there is one thing Thanos hates, it is impudence. I spoke out of turn and he punished me for it, with-" he shuddered as the memories returned- "with fire, endless fire. Never underestimate pain as motivation to get somebody to bend to your will, Gwen. And when he thought he had me broken, he gave me an army and a sceptre with the Mind Gem in its core."

"Huh?"

"It is what gave the sceptre the power to hypnotise. In its purest form it can also be used as a weapon, as can all the relics, but mind intervention is what gave it the name. They didn't trust my silver tongue, so they gave me that instead. Then they used the Tesseract to burn a hole through space-time, which was almost as unpleasant as the torture in the first place, and I found myself on this stunted excuse for a planet.

"And then the Avengers happened upon me," he said in a lighter tone, leaning back in his chair. "And here we are."

"They tortured you," she said, black eyes wide.

"Gwen, I do not pity you and I ask that you afford me the same courtesy," he said severely.

"Right," she muttered, "of course, sorry. I won't let these revelations affect my view of you as a moderately shitty person."

"Only moderately?" he asked, "that's an improvement."

"You're growing on me," she admitted. She had dyed her hair recently; it was a slightly more orange-tinted shade of pink, one that put him in mind of sunsets, and she had cut it shorter too. Although still quite odd-looking, she was becoming more and more put-together; he was really quite proud. "Aren't you going to ask about Thunderboy?"

"I trust you to tell me if there is anything important," he said.

The corner of her lip twitched, showing the gap in her teeth. "You trust me? That's new. I feel like I should get a certificate or summat."

"It's probably a terrible mistake," he replied, "an anomaly in my otherwise excellent judgement."

"Modesty really isn't your thing, is it? You're lucky you've got somebody as grounded as me around," she said in a falsely well-spoken voice, pulling what she must have thought was a haughty face. "Have you heard any more about Lucy?"

"You seeing your daughter was a one-off, Gwen, for a myriad of reasons. Don't expect it to happen again." She looked rather unhappy about that. "I am sure her mother would know if she was in trouble."

"I guess," Gwen said, but she didn't look very certain.

"If you're going to continue being such wonderful company," he announced, "I'm going back to Asgard."

"Hmm? Oh, sorry, just… nothing."

Loki rolled his eyes. "What's the matter with you, mouse?"

"My daughter's on the other side of the planet, she has no idea who I am and I'm never going to see her again," she snapped, and buried her face in her hands. "Oh god, I'm sorry again, I didn't mean to say that. I'm very tired."

"Maybe you would sleep better if you didn't have an aversion to beds," he suggested, as if it wasn't incredibly obvious. Gwen was one of the cleverer mortals he had met, but she was still occasionally very stupid.

"Yeah," she said in an over-earnest voice, "and maybe if I didn't have a complex about 'em, I might sleep in one."

"Isn't it time you got over that?" he said with a trace of exasperation.

"You would make the worst therapist _ever_. 'Doctor, I'm depressed!' 'Stop'."

"Hilarious. Get up," he said, and she hesitated before standing. Jaw jutted out in frustration at her, he grabbed her wrist and dragged her into the bedroom.

"Oi!" she yelled as she struggled, but her strength was non-existent compared to his. "What d'you think you're-" he threw her face-down onto the bed. "Holy shit," she said in a muffled voice, "it's like a cloud."

"It really isn't," Loki told her. "A cloud couldn't sustain your weight, it's a cluster of condensed-"

"Shut up. This… this is really nice," she admitted, sprawling out her limbs.

"I'm so glad you've caught up with the rest of civilisation," he said, and she rolled over to glare at him. "Aren't you going to thank me?"

"No," she said adamantly, and faceplanted the pillow again. "I'm going to lie here and have a religious experience. God is real, and he's in feather pillows."

"So long as you're happy," Loki said drily. "Goodnight, mouse."

"Posh boy."

He didn't fully know why he followed her to museums and watched as they lit her eyes up like black light. She was just so fascinating to him, more than any Midgardian ought to be, and she intrigued him, too. Loki's knowledge of adopted children was first hand, and yet Laufey had never shown any interest in him other than as a way to get to Odin; the same way Loki had used killing Laufey to prove his right to the throne of Asgard, even though he had known by that point it wasn't his birth right. He had always believed, since then, that family could be chosen- he had chosen first to abandon the name of Odinson, and then reclaim it before his supposed death. And yet she couldn't have chosen to love her child so fiercely when she had never known it, so why? Why did she care?

And why did he care about her?

 **A/N all I could think of when I wrote the "you would make a terrible therapist" bit was the Doctor Free episode of RTAA on youtube. Actually, a surprising amount of Rooster Teeth stuff ends up in my fics one way or another. Probably should try to stop with that a bit. Anyway, hope you liked!**


	8. Chapter 8

Gwen hated being a maid with every fibre of her being. Every aspect of it clashed with what she felt she ought to be doing, and good god, the Avengers were terrible at cleaning up after themselves- and she was sure half of them did it on purpose. At least with Loki it was only one god's worth of ego, whereas in the tower there was an entire team of it.

Her one ally was Jarvis, the British disembodied voice who ran anything to do with Stark. The AI was lucky enough not to have deep emotions, so he didn't get pissed off like Gwen- or Annie, as she was known there- did, which meant he was always there to talk her out of punching something. Or someone, for that matter.

There were just two positives to this- she now knew more about Thor than she had ever wanted to, and she was getting paid a living wage. She was very excited to tell James the valet this, who had inadvertently become her friend.

"I'm very happy for you miss," he said earnestly as he changed the sheets on the bed. "At least one of us isn't having money problems, miss."

"What's the matter, James?"

"My roommate's just moved out, miss, and I can't afford the rent on my own. But don't you worry, miss, I'm sure I'll think of something."

"You don't need to," she told him, "I'll bunk with you, if you want."

"Really, miss? I would've thought you'd be happy here, miss, what with Mr Warwickson paying for everything."

"Exactly," she replied, "I ain't self-sufficient and I don't like it. Where d'you live?"

"Just round the corner, miss, it's easier than commuting every day. I work late most days so you'd probably see me less than you do now, miss-"

"Am I interrupting something?" said an icy voice, "or should I leave and let the both of you continue playing happy families?"

James straightened with a jolt. "Sorry, sir, didn't see you there, sir."

"I'm thinking about moving in with Jamesie-boy here," Gwen told Loki, "figured it'd be easier for everyone."

"Leave us, James."

"Yessir. I'll be up later with dinner-"

" _NOW!_ "

James disappeared with a small yelp, and disappeared through the door.

Gwen folded her arms. "What was that for?" she demanded.

"Haven't you ever heard of gratitude?" he asked her, cyan eyes cold. His glamour had been slowly fading back into his ordinary form around James, gradual enough for the valet not to recognise him when he eventually wouldn't need it at all.

"Oh, don't be such a pissbaby. At least this way you don't have to play for this place, or much else now I'm earning."

"In a job you hate," he pointed out.

"Which you want me to do!" It was like dealing with a stroppy kid. "There is no logical problem with this arrangement, and all I can think of is that you're jealous."

"Oh, don't flatter yourself," he snapped, and she huffed.

"Look, he'll barely be around and it's bound to attract much less attention than here, it'll make me seem more legit and we're not gonna get complaints from the lobby that our arguing is disturbing the other guests anymore." This latter point had occurred enough times for them both to consider it quite a serious problem, and Gwen guessed from him scowling instead of him smirking that he agreed.

"Fine," he muttered, "but I refuse to set foot in your home if it becomes a hovel."

"Oright princess, whatever you say." She had said the jealousy thing just to tease him, but in reality she suspected he didn't like having someone else call the shots. "Posh boy, you know it's a good idea."

He glared moodily into a corner and didn't answer.

"Jeez, I feel sorry for your poor mother," she joked, and winced as she remembered what had actually happened to Frigga. "Sorry. That just… slipped out."

He shook his head and laughed shortly as something occurred to him. "I still don't fully understand why I haven't killed you yet."

"I'll take that as me being forgiven, then."

%

She went and bought a new rucksack to put all her stuff in, and James was surprised at her one bag when she turned up on his doorstep with Algernon on her shoulder. To keep it in proportion with their new lodgings, she had bought him a smaller cage that would sit in a corner of her bedroom- _that_ excited her too. For the first time in almost a decade, she would have her own bedroom, and she wouldn't be too scared to sleep in it.

Aside from her own room there was James' room, a bathroom, a kitchen-diner and a tiny lounge with a couple of threadbare sofas and a TV.

"It isn't much, miss, but it's home," James said in an apologetic tone.

"It's lovely. And you can stop calling me 'miss' now, James."

"Yes, miss."

She sighed heavily. "Downstairs looked pretty empty on my way in."

James nodded. "Man who owns the building made the rent a lot higher for the ground floor, miss, since it's got access to the basement which is bloody enormous, pardon my French. Goes on for blocks, apparently, used to be part of the underground railroad. Links to the subway too, miss, and it's got proper plumbing and electricity and all that."

"I can understand why he wants to hold onto it, then."

"I'll show you if you like, miss."

Downstairs, which was accessed by a separate door, had another little bathroom and a few rooms that connected to each other in odd ways that put Gwen in mind of a burrow. They had to walk through three to find where the door to the basement had been plaster-boarded shut- "but if you knock on it, miss, you can hear that it's hollow."

"And none of the crime capos know about this?" She whistled through her teeth. "Cor. This is a valuable asset, this is."

"I hope they don't find out about it, miss. I don't want the mafia as my neighbour, if that's all right with you."

She shut herself in her new room and sat on the floor, creating a small arena with her legs for Algernon to run around in. There was another reason for her settling a little, one she hadn't told Loki. Living in a flat would be more respectable than a hotel room which a mysterious someone else paid for, people would be more likely to trust her. And in order to achieve what she wanted, coming across as trustworthy would be a massive help.

She was going to get her daughter back.

"James!" she yelled, "I'm going out!"

"Okay, miss!"

Algernon rode in her breast pocket as she strolled through the backstreets around her and James' apartment, getting her bearings and looking for escape routes. She was having a perfectly decent time until she heard the vaguely familiar footsteps behind her.

She led her and her follower into a shadowy side-alley, then spun around with her knife held tightly in one hand. "Make it easier for yourself and step forward," she called out, and a bulky man with several tattoos and gold teeth emerged from the shadows. "Oh, it's you."

"Nice to see you too, Mel," he said, as she tucked her knife back into her pocket. "How's Algernon?"

"Getting fat. What d'you want, Ben?"

"Was wondering where you got to," he said, "you vanished without a trace, remember?"

"Did not," she said petulantly, "I sent a message back to the girls at St Jude's."

"Yeah, and it wasn't exactly detailed. What happened?"

"I got a client. He's a bigshot, Ben, I couldn't let him pass."

"Do I know his name?"

"Probably, though I ain't telling you it."

Ben chuckled. "Fair enough. I need someone finding, Mel."

"Like I said, I got a client. Too busy for two." _Not to mention the kid's in the picture now._

"Don't care," said Ben, "this guy thinks he can cheek me and get away with it."

"Dumb guy."

"Yeah. Well, can you find him?"

"Undoubtedly," she said, "if I had the time, which I don't."

"C'mon, Pinky," he moaned, and the use of her old pet name made Gwen smile. "Make a deal with one of the St Jude's girls or somethin'."

"I don't…" she tailed off. "Actually, that isn't a half-bad idea. I'll send word out when I know the tag's fixed."

"How will you find me?" Ben asked, as she began to walk away.

"I always do!"

She heard his wheezy chuckle as she rounded the corner, on her way to St Jude's women's refuge. Ben wouldn't be the last person to track her down now that he had a vague idea of where she was, and requests for her to tag someone would start to come in thick and fast again. Everyone knew she was one of the best taggers in New York, _and_ the only one never to have been discovered, so perhaps, instead of turning most of her jobs down, she could take advantage of her rep and… outsource.

%

St Jude's would take any woman off the streets, which was unusual, but they also thought they could discipline their girls' bad habits out of them. This obviously didn't work, and Gwen shimmied up the drain pipe and through the window with the broken latch into the kitchen that housed the clique of girls she used to fall in with.

"Sophie!" one of them exclaimed, dropping her mug in the sink. "Where the hell have you been?"

"Not important," she said, "listen, you lot've all tagged people before, right?"

"Not very well," another girl, this one with a red Mohawk, shrugged. "Why?"

"I'll tell you how to do it right, and you do jobs for me, yeah?"

The first woman raised a heavily pierced eyebrow. "What's in it for us?"

"A home," she said, "beds and food and showers, whenever you want 'em. Money too, once we're established enough. And I'll make sure you're safe. It'll be a damn sight better than any shelter in NYC."

"Doesn't sound very legit," said someone. "Where'd you get the money for buying this place to stay?"

"I didn't," she said, "not yet. But I know someone who can get it for me." She looked round at the sceptical faces. "I know it sounds like bullshit, but trust me, yeah? If I get the place, I'll send you the address and if anyone's interested, they meet me there next Sunday noon."

"You want us all to break the law for you?" one asked.

"Don't count as breaking the law if nobody finds out you're tagging 'em," she pointed out. "And when I'm done with you, they won't be able to. C'mon, when have I ever messed any of you about before?"

A loud babbling of several people speaking at once rose from the cluster of girls, and Gwen waved her hands.

"Alright, alright, I get it. Just trust me this once, okay? I swear on Algernon's life."

"You're that serious about this?" asked the Mohawk girl, and Gwen nodded. "Well… maybe I'll think about it."

Gwen nodded. _So much for trustworthiness,_ she thought, _but points for initiative._

 **A/N so most of the directors being considered for Ragnarok were, like, comedy directors. And I don't think he's in the running anymore but Reuben Fleischer was being considered, aka the director of Zombieland, aka the greatest film ever, of all time. I WILL SELL MY SOUL FOR THAT MAN TO DIRECT THE NEXT THOR FILM**


	9. Chapter 9

"Loki?"

It must have been something big, because she was using his actual name. "What?" he asked suspiciously.

"Can I borrow a million dollars?"

"Sorry?"

"I mean, you probably won't get it back, but y'know. Borrow sounds nicer."

He closed his eyes, counted to ten and took a deep breath. "Gwen," he said slowly, "what are you planning?"

"My empire," she replied cheerfully, stood at the stove with a pan of something hot and delicious-smelling. "I've had an idea."

"Oh," he said, " _good_."

"Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, posh boy. Did you know, there's an entire labyrinth of passages and rooms under our feet?"

"You want to buy the building," he said, and she nodded in confirmation. "To create an empire of what, exactly?"

Her gap-toothed smile grew wider. "Rats."

She explained the plan as she cooked, and as extravagantly, over-reachingly insane as it was, Loki had to admit it wasn't bad- and besides, he wasn't exactly averse to extravagant and over-reaching plans himself.

"If I make you this money," he said, "what about the Weimar Republic?"

She snorted with laughter. "The bloke who owns this place is a hoarder. I doubt that million will ever see the light of day when we hand it to him. Or…"

"Or what?" Loki asked, playing absent-mindedly with the sharpest knife in the block next to him.

"Leprachaun gold," she said, "hand it over, it disappears by morning. That seems more your style."

"You're not wrong," he said, flipping the knife into the air and catching it by the blade.

" _And_ ," she added, "I can kick this maid job into the dust and get one of the other rats to tag Thor for you instead."

"But I want you to do it," Loki whined, before he could stop himself.

"Well, my poor little sausage, you'll have to make do with a much nicer, prettier girl instead, most likely," she said in an offhand voice. "And it's not like you're having to pay for my upkeep anymore." She dropped the spoon she was holding on the side, walked over to where Loki was sat on the kitchen side, stood between his parted legs and batted her eyelashes at him. "Pretty please?"

"Fine," he said shortly, if only to get her to vacate her position between his legs. "But I'm coming with you."

"Where to?" she asked over her shoulder, returning to the stove.

"When you buy the building, idiot."

"Ahh, _that_."

"I'm hardly going to trust you with my immense wealth, even if it is conjured. Gwen," he said, "at the risk of sending you off into another rant, don't you think you might be aiming a little above your pay grade, so to speak?"

She turned around to jab the spoon in his direction. "Listen up posh boy, just 'cos I-"

"Oh, shut up," he said, and she glowered at him. "I meant that you've never attempted something on this scale before, or at least that I assume. You can't step from sneak thief to leader of a crime syndicate in a day."

"It won't take a day," she said, "it'll take at _least_ a couple of weeks. And besides," she added, "I've got a king to help me out, ain't I?"

 _I never asked for this_ , Loki thought darkly, _out of all the sneaks in Midgard, I had to choose the one with ambition, not to mention a vicious bloody mouse._ "Unfortunately for me. This all seems a little sudden, mouse."

"The stuff I tell you is not all the stuff there is going on in my brain," she scolded him, "don't be so conceited."

"So says the woman trying to run an empire," he pointed out.

"Ha!"

%

"Are you panicking?" Loki asked Gwen, as she drummed the heel of her shoe repeatedly into the floor. He had cast a glamour over them both so they appeared quite the stereotypical Midgardian couple, but there was still an aura of anxiousness coming off of her.

"I prefer to stay in the shadows," she whispered back, "instead of just striding in and… and doing what we're doing."

"Perhaps I should have left you behind," he murmured.

"Bitch, this is my business."

"And my money."

"Which you magicked- mmf mff mmf!" she finished, due to the fact Loki's hand was over her mouth. He raised an eyebrow and she looked stonily back at him before he removed his hand. "You're lucky I didn't bite you."

"Oh, I'm well aware of your feral tendencies. Just keep your pretty mouth shut and nothing should go wrong." _Heh._

"You really think I'm pretty?" she asked in a high-pitched voice, and he knocked her with his shoulder.

"Mr and Mrs Foley?" a large man in a suit asked, walking into the waiting room of the poky building owned by the man who also rented out Gwen's rooms.

"Oh!" Gwen trilled in the same accent as the rest of the mortals in this part of Midgard, and Loki stared at her. "Finally! Me and my husband are just _so_ excited about this venture, aren't we Johnny?"

 _Fine,_ Loki thought, _if she wants to play…_ "Absolutely!" he laughed, in an accent to rival her own. "The kids are just gonna _love_ that Mommy and Daddy are starting their own company!" He repressed the gag rising in his throat.

The besuited man nodded, a trace of amusement on his face. "If you'll both follow me."

Gwen waited until he was six strides ahead of them to drop her façade. "Arsehole."

"You started it," Loki muttered, and as the suit turned back round they both beamed at him. She yanked the briefcase filled with what, for all intents and purposes, appeared to be fully legitimate American dollars out of his hand and hugged it to her own chest, so that he couldn't snatch it back off of her.

The owner of the building, who Gwen had called Hughes, was a pasty-looking man with egg stains down his necktie. His eyes never left the briefcase as he offered them a seat and took his own chair behind his desk.

"Well," Loki smiled, still wearing the accent, "I don't see any point in drawing this out, do you?"

"No, sweetie, I don't think I do," Gwen added with an equally sickly grin. The glamour had filled in her missing tooth, but by this point he was so used to the gap that he found her smile a little disconcerting. They both turned to look at Hughes, who grimaced back at them and slid a contract across the table.

Loki grabbed it before she could and signed his fake name with a flourish before sliding it across to Gwen. She added her own name even more extravagantly and handed it back to Hughes atop the briefcase. As soon as the greasy little man's hands were on it he flipped the clasps and pulled it open, and Loki watched with smug self-satisfaction as the wealth reflected in his watery eyes.

"The contract's watertight?" he asked, and Hughes nodded without looking. "Excellent. Darling, time to go."

"But-"

" _Now_ , my sweetest." He took her wrist and hauled her out of the room.

"What's the rush?" she asked him, stumbling in her new shoes.

"You'll find out soon enough. Don't look back," he ordered her, striding through the waiting room and flinging open the door to the neglected staircase.

"Loki," she said in a warning tone, "what have you done?"

Through the still-open door there drifted a strangled scream, the sort of scream a man would utter if… "I enchanted the money to last only as long as he looked at it," he confessed, breaking into a run.

"You utter wankstain!" Gwen yelled at him, tearing off her high-heeled shoes and pelting after him. " _WHY?!"_

"Thought it might make things more interesting," he said, jumping half the flight to the landing of the next floor down. "Which it did, I might add."

" _Are you insane?!"_ she screeched, slipping in her stockings.

"Quite possibly!" He felt her hands shove into his back, and the thundering of countless security guards' feet as they joined them on the stairwell.

"I'm going to kill you, Loki, I swear to-!"

"Is that laughter I hear in your voice, Gwen?"

"SHUT UP!"

They burst out into the bright sunlight of the New York street, and Loki was temporarily thrown- where now? If this were Asgard, he would know precisely where to run, but-

Gwen gripped his hand and pulled him down a side-alley, and he dropped their glamours as they tore down the maze of backstreets. As she looked over her shoulder to check he was still there he saw she was laughing, and her smile softened her face as strands of sunset hair flew across it. Her eyes caught his. There was something about that smile, wicked and saintly all at once, that changed her face from nothing worth noting to something weirdly beautiful.

The moment passed as quickly as it came, and she looked back ahead to navigate them back to their new building. Ten minutes later they both collapsed through the door to her rooms, Gwen panting with exhaustion and he barely flustered. James screamed as they burst in and picked up the nearest thing to hand in order to defend himself with, which happened to be a cushion.

"Oh," he said, "I thought you were breaking in, sorry."

"That would be somewhat difficult," Loki replied as Gwen caught her breath while lying on her back, "considering we own the building."

"What? I mean, what, sir?"

"I'll explain later," Gwen breathed, waving a sweaty hand in the air. "But you don't have to pay rent anymore."

"Oh. That's nice, miss. I've got to go to work now, miss, I'll see you later."

"Before you go," Gwen said, sitting up. "You don't happen to have a sledgehammer lying about, do you?"

"Funny you should say that, miss."

Ten minutes later, Loki and Gwen were stood in front of the boarding that hid the door to the basement, after having had a brief scuffle over who got to use the hammer. Loki had surprised himself by letting her win that one.

"This is it," she said, "this is the doorway to my new life."

"There's no need to be so metaphorical," Loki said, who had grown up with Fandral and his terrible poetry.

"Spoilsport."

"The quicker you get this over and done with, the better. You have work in the morning, you know, which you are required to attend until you recruit someone to replace you."

"You nearly destroyed the entire plan to make some mischief," she reminded him, "let me have my fun."

"Only because I like you," he relented, and her cheeks turned as pink as her hair.

"You really like me?" she asked. "Like, you're _sure_?"

"No, mouse," he said, "this is all some elaborate scheme to create your undoing."

"You're adopted."

"You've used that one before."

"I've got a sledgehammer, posh boy, and I'm not afraid to use it," she threatened him, and he smirked.

"Have fun with it, Gwen. I must return to Asgard, Nilfheim is at war with itself and seems to expect me to sort it out."

"Have fun with that," she said, eyes back on the wall. She hefted the sledgehammer in both hands, but he was back in the cave before it even connected with the wall.

 **A/N confession time: this was a** ** _ridiculous_** **amount of fun to write. Actually, I think this fic might be my favourite out of the three Civilian Chronicles (ie this, Coffee Run and Finding Bucky). But sshh. Don't tell anyone.**


	10. Chapter 10

"So," said James slowly, "Mr Warwickson's actually Loki, and you're about to run a secret guild of spies?"

"That's about it," she nodded. They were sat on the rickety metal fire escape attached to the side of the building, watching construction workers enter and leave (paid with real, or at least permanent, money). They told her it would be done within the upcoming week, and she was jittery with excitement.

"Wow."

"I know."

"But he was always very nice to me, miss. Just as nice as you are."

"Be glad you don't know the stuff I did before the hotel," she said, patting him on the shoulder.

"Oh. Are you sure you don't want me to pay rent, miss? I don't mind."

She stared at him. "James, you're surrounded by criminals and you're asking me about rent."

"So long as you don't involve me in any of that malarkey, miss, I think it'll be alright."

"You're a blessing to this earth, James."

"Thank you, miss."

She picked a lump of rust off the railings, and felt Algernon twist round in her pocket. "There's something else I need to tell you, James."

"What is it, miss?"

"I… I have a daughter. She got taken away from me when she was a baby, but I'm going to get her back. Loki doesn't know and I doubt he'd be very happy about it, but it's none of his business and I _am_ going to find her again. So if you see anything to do with a little girl on the other side of the globe lying around, that's why. I'm getting Lucy back."

"Good for you, miss."

"I get the impression you'd agree with anything I say, James."

"Probably, miss."

"I can't help but think that's a bad thing."

"Most likely, miss," James said cheerfully. "There's some people looking at us, miss."

She jumped up and saw that a dozen girls from the refuge were looking up at them from the pavement below. She ran down, taking the rickety stairs two at a time, and skidded to a halt in front of them with a delighted smile.

"You came!" she exclaimed, "I honestly wasn't expecting anyone."

"The builders walking in and out of here kinda suggest otherwise," said the Mohawk girl, also known as Bobby. "So what happens now?"

"Our other guest should be here any- oh, Ben, there you are. Ben, these are The Rats. Rats, this is Ben. He's killed several people, but who hasn't, right?"

Half the girls already knew the mob boss, and the rest smiled a little nervously.

"Evening, ladies," said Ben, "and… gentleman…"

"Hello, sir."

"That's James," said Gwen, "he also lives here."

"What does he do?" Ben asked.

"He works in a fancy hotel uptown. He's also completely legit, so don't get him involved, any of you."

"He's adorable," Ben announced, before refocusing. "I got three guys who've disappeared, Pinky, and I need 'em finding." He handed her a crumpled piece of paper and she smoothed it out to see three names written on it in smudged ink. One of them was just a nickname.

"We can get you their locations in two weeks," Gwen said confidently.

"I need 'em by Friday."

"Fair enough," she shrugged, "payment on delivery, I guess."

"How we've always done it. Get 'em to me early and I'll spread the word about you lot, and throw in a couple of muggins for free, make sure the place is safe."

"Cheers, Ben."

"No problem. And if you don't get me their addresses by Sunday, I'm cutting out your tongue," he added, in the air of someone reading out their grocery list.

"It's how we've always done it," she smiled, and Ben grinned a gold-toothed grin back. "See you later."

"Bye, Pinky." He sauntered off, leaving Gwen with a bunch of very apprehensive-looking young women who clearly hadn't been expecting the tongue threat. "Have a little faith in me. You didn't think I could get this place either, did you, and here we are." They didn't look very reassured, so she decided to just get on with it. There was a deadline, after all. "Right, then. We'd best get cracking."

She taught the Rats half of what she knew about tagging, which was a hell of a lot more than what they knew already, and promised them a new home by the time the new jobs were done. With four girls to a mark they would have them found in no time, Gwen thought confidently, and while a thirteenth share of what they were paid she kept for herself and James the rest would go towards food and upkeep of the burrow. At the end, with them all stuffed into one of the gutted rooms, she climbed onto a table and prepared herself to speech.

"I know," she said, "I know this seems crazy, that _I_ seem crazy. And I probably am, a little bit- but you're all here too, and that counts for something. Maybe you like the romance of it all, the espionage. Maybe you're here for the money, to pay for your next kick. Maybe you're actually here for me, in which case… thanks, that means a lot more than you know. And I promise, whatever you want, within reason, I'll do my best to get it for you. But there's another reason you're all here, too- because you all need something. It's not impressive, it's not complicated, and it's something everyone should get, regardless of who you are.

"You need a home. Because when you don't have one, when you're living on the streets, you're nobody. You might have been a model, or a banker, or a hooker whatever- but the moment you start begging, start tapping, you're just another invisible. Aimless. A nuisance, yeah, but no real threat. Because while you're better at tagging than MI6 and the CIA combined, you got no reason to do it. You got nothing to fight for except yourself, and what are you worth? Nothing worth protecting.

"But now, you got beds. You got rooms, showers, a place to keep your clothes dry and a steady income. And you know what that gives you? Something to protect, something to fight for, a rock bottom that's just that little bit higher than it was before. Higher for you to reach everyone else. You got a reason to do something beyond just surviving, now. You got a reason to _live_ , to _flourish_ , to take what you deserve from the people that have too much and spend it all on the dark people, the dirty people like us. Now you have motivation, selfishness, _territory_. And that makes you dangerous, and powerful, and capable of changing the world."

There was a weighty pause as eyes, eyes that knew the true meaning of hunger, of fear and desperation, stared back at her. And then finally, someone- Bobby- spoke.

"Please don't tell me this whole soliloquy shebang is gonna be a regular thing, or I won't be held responsible for my actions."

The spell broke, the crowd laughed, and Gwen relaxed. "Go choose your rooms," she said, "if you need a hand, me and James are around. And don't forget, you're safe here. Across this threshold, the only thing that can hurt you is me. So don't piss me off," she added, only half-joking.

At the end of the day, she pulled the most ordinary, nervous-looking girl aside and asked if she wanted something a little more legal. The kid agreed, obviously, so Gwen walked up to Stark Tower to hand in her resignation. She got along well enough with the management that they even promised to consider the replacement she suggested, who was of course the meekest Rat.

And when all of the business stuff was done and she was alone in her bedroom, Gwen could finally think about Lucy again. Admittedly the social services weren't going to be happy about her career choice, but who gave a damn about them? They weren't going to stop her seeing her daughter, nobody was. And now she had her own business of sorts, she was better placed than ever to raise her daughter.

Lucy, who was everything Gwen wasn't; innocent, whole and safe. Who had never had to want for anything, except her _real_ mother. Gwen would give up all that she had just built for herself in order to see her daughter again, to experience her embrace for the first time since she had had to give her up, and it was just a tiny pink hand clutched around her own little finger.

She grabbed a few sheets of paper from a bookshelf, and began to make plans for how to get to England.

 **A/N first of a double update to make up for the fact there's no Loki in this chapter. Also in this chapter, we see Gwen's just as fond of grand speeches as her godly employer.**


	11. Chapter 11

_"I wished to take the soul of my dead mother in my arms. Three times I started towards her, and my heart was urgent to hold her, and three times she fluttered out of my hands like a shadow or a dream, and sorrow sharpened at the heart within me."_

 _-The Odyssey, Homer_

The civil war in Nilfheim meant Loki was unable to visit Midgard for a month and a half, during which time he became increasingly paranoid about what could have happened. He did not trust Gwen at all with something of the scale she was planning, and anything could have happened- death, war, large-scale fire. Plague, possibly. Midgardians were not to be trusted.

He materialised down a deserted alley near to her new home, lest it actually be aflame and he appear right in the centre of the inferno. Pulling up his usual glamour, he crept cautiously out onto the main street, which was surprisingly intact, and was spotted by a member of the crowd.

"Hello, sir."

"James," Loki replied shortly.

The boy waved a small translucent box in the air. "Miss Gwen wanted me to bring her back dinner from the hotel, sir, so I'll walk back with you- I assume that's where you're going?"

 _Wonderful_ , said Loki, who even in his internal monologue was, by default, sarcastic. _I have a companion._ "Obviously, James." _Because I would absolutely want to go anywhere else in this Midgardian tar pit._

"Okay then, sir." They had already reached the building Loki now technically part-owned, and to his surprise it looked exactly the same, save for the large and menacing man whose arm stopped Loki from entering after James.

"I would suggest removing your hand from me," Loki said coolly as the dagger he kept hidden in his sleeve dropped into his hand. "I've had a very long day and I do not have the patience for mortals who think they can stop me from doing whatever it is I want to do."

Before someone got stabbed, James intervened. "He knows the boss, sir, and I can vouch for that. She won't be very happy if you don't let him through."

The brute narrowed his eyes at Loki, but lowered his arm, and the god winked at him as he walked past. James led him into the downstairs area of the house, which had been refurbished in dark, earthy colours, and knocked on the door at the end of the hallway.

"No cold callers," a familiar voice yelled, and James chuckled as he pushed open the door.

There was a desk in the middle of the bookshelf-lined office, covered with papers and odd little trinkets that Loki guessed Gwen must have pickpocketed on reflex; she had done it to him enough times, after all, and he was sure he recognised the short throwing knife that was in a mug otherwise filled with pencils. Behind it, Algernon on her shoulder, was the woman herself.

She looked better than Loki had ever seen her. The sneak thief was leaning back in her chair with her feet up on the desk and was wearing a great deal of black silk and leather, as well as heeled boots which must have added a good hand's width to her height. Her crooked smile grew as the two men entered, and Loki noticed that the gap in it had been filled with a glittering silver tooth.

"Thought I recognised your dulcet tones, posh boy," she said, in an accent that was as rough as it had ever been- some things never changed, thankfully. "Where the hell've you been?"

"Busy," said Loki, "I assumed the Rats worked out."

"Better than I ever imagined," she said cheerfully, "and I have a very active imagination. Thanks, James."

"No problem miss," said the valet, having handed over the box. He nodded respectfully to the other two and backed out of the room.

"There was a war going on in Nifflerville or something, wasn't there?" she asked, opening the box and inhaling deeply.

"Nilfheim," Loki corrected her, taking a seat opposite her. He didn't like that she seemed a lot more comfortable than he did, since it made him feel like he was no longer the one in control, which was not a pleasant sensation. "And I have it under hand."

"I'm very proud of you," she said, through a mouthful of food. "Sorry if the guy at the door was a bit pissy about letting you in, he's one of Ben's men and he wouldn't have had a clue who you were, let alone that you were my bitch."

"You have such a way with words," said Loki, "it's almost poetic."

"Thanks, babe." She dropped the box in the bin under the desk and sucked her fingers clean. "It's so _cool_ here, posh boy, I have my own office and everything. And we have house meetings, and they all expect _me_ to make the big decisions." She laughed, a little disbelievingly. "If this is what power feels like, I can almost understand you trying to take over the world. Oh, I can introduce you to the new girl tagging Thor if you want. You'll like her- she's quiet and not argumentative, which I'm sure'll make a nice change for you."

Loki took his knife out of the pencil holder. "I would rather just talk to you."

"I'm flattered," she smiled.

"Don't be, I'm just trying to keep the number of Midgardians I have to talk to at a minimum."

"Still flattered," she shrugged, and Loki heard himself laugh. "You want a cup of tea?"

"No."

"Oh good, me too."

Loki followed her through several illogically placed doors into a poky kitchen. "The big one's underground," she explained, pulling two cups out of a cupboard, "all the stuff the Rats use is. They can make stuff for themselves and every Sunday James cooks a big dinner, since apparently he has a degree in catering. Who'd've thunk it?" She gave him a cup now filled with hot brown liquid, and now that she was closer Loki could appreciate the height difference the shoes gave her, since she was now only a couple of inches shorter than him.

"Thought, not thunk. I really can't express how little I care," he said, sipping the drink. It was hot, and somehow managed to be both sweet and bitter at the same time.

"What if I don't care that you don't care?" she asked, biting her lip as she grinned at him.

"Then we might end up devolving into a very cyclical and pointless argument," he replied, "and neither of us want that. This is disgusting, by the way."

"It's an acquired taste. I've missed you, by the way."

Loki choked on his tea. "Sorry?"

"Oh, I forgot you were a cold and emotionless husk of a man, who is physically repulsed by any display of feelings," she smirked, "but that doesn't mean _I_ can't miss you." She gave him an expectant look.

"I hope you're not expecting me to return the statement," he said, and she lifted a shoulder.

"I could hug you, if it would make saying it any easier."

"And I could take advantage of your proximity to stab you," he said, "perhaps we're better maintaining our distance from each other."

"You're no fun," she pouted. "How's life as the lonely king?"

"Take the feeling of power you think you have and multiply a thousandfold," Loki instructed her, and Gwen tilted her head back and moaned softly as she imagined it. "You're still not even close."

"Gah… feel like making me your deputy, uh, monarch?"

"Not even remotely," Loki replied, inwardly shuddering at the state Asgard would fall into if he let a mortal anywhere near it- even if it was Gwen. _Stop making exceptions for her_ , he chastised himself, _she's just another irrelevant Midgardian._ "And I believe the term you're looking for is crown princess."

"See?" she said triumphantly. "I would make a _great_ one of those!"

%

That night, back in his Asgardian quarters, Loki dreamed of Frigga.

It happened more often than he would care to admit, but this time it was different. Before, his mother had been elusive and he would have to chase her, only to see a dark elf put a knife in her just as he reached them; this was a recurring nightmare, in fact, and not one he enjoyed. Again, that feeling of powerlessness haunted him.

Tonight, however, he was back in his old cell in the base of Asgard, as he and Frigga slowly circled each other.

"If you're here to talk to me about Odin-" he began, but as she raised her hand he fell silent.

"That is a discussion for another time, my dear, but it is _definitely_ one we are going to have." Her voice was stern and in different circumstances Loki might have been intimidated by it, but now his heart leapt as she spoke for the first time in too long.

"I miss you," he said.

"I know."

"I should have done something."

"That would have been a little difficult," said Frigga sagely, "when you were stuck in here. However, it was your own actions that put you in this cell, so…"

"I'm sorry."

"I know, my darling, I know you are. And I know that you are trying to atone for it with your rule on Asgard, even if you don't. Even if there are _other_ things you should feel guilty over, and unfailingly do not."

That had never occurred to Loki- but then, his mother was almost always right. "You're not my mother," he said, speaking the familiar words he always muttered to himself after his nightmares. "You're just my subconscious, trying to scare me. Or in this case, apparently, talk some sense into me."

Frigga laughed. "And why should that make any difference? Loki, admit that you have feelings for the girl."

"What girl?" he asked, and Frigga raised an eyebrow at him. "There are plenty in Asgard alone who-"

"I'm not talking about the women you've taken to bed, Loki, and you know it. Just because she is Midgardian-"

"There is no 'just' about it, mother, they are inferior in every way."

"Enough of your bigotry. You should know more than anyone how damaging it can be, what with your true parentage."

"That was unneeded," Loki muttered. "And who cares if it is damaging? Her life will pass in the blink of an eye compared to mine."

"That girl has over half a century left in her yet, and I can assure you that is quite long enough to love someone."

He laughed coldly. "Love is for children."

"And wasn't it a human who told you that? It is precisely because their lives are so fleeting that Midgardians have achieved things we cannot imagine," Frigga said calmly, "look at Gwen. A year ago she had nothing, and now half of New York's underworld relies on her and her Rats."

"With my help," he added.

"Oh," said Frigga, "I had forgotten. Of course, _you_ achieved everything you have on your own. Very admirable."

"Now I know you're my subconscious," said Loki, "since you're being sarcastic." But it hurt to look at her nonetheless.

"But I'm also right. And she also doesn't care about the things you have done," said Frigga, "you won't find many people like that in any realm."

"That's because she's no better than I am," Loki retorted.

"If you insist. But that does mean she is your equal," she pointed out, "if you can stomach that."

"She's not even attractive," said Loki, already scraping the bottom of the barrel for arguments. "Not really."

"She is to you."

He gave up, and thought about what it would be like to kiss Gwen; her lips looked like they would be soft, tilted up in her usual smirk against his own, and he could imagine her piercing snagging on his teeth… "She's still feral," he mumbled, and Frigga smiled.

"She makes you laugh, Loki, and she's clever enough that you have to think yourself in order to keep up with her. I'm not saying that she will make you happy, but she can hold your attention better than anybody else. And I think you need distracting." She finally approached him, and as he reached out to her his hand passed through hers like it was smoke. "Not to mention she's just as tricksy as you are."

He laughed weakly. "Please don't leave me."

"I was never here in the first place, sweetheart. Just stop holding yourself back around her." Her fingers caressed his face gently, and it felt like the lightest of breezes. "You need somebody to hold onto."

He jerked upright, awake and back in his bed in the glamour of Odin, breathing heavily. One of the handmaidens stood by the chamber door looked over to him and smiled sadly in the gloom.

"Frigga again, my lord?"

Jaw clenched tight, he nodded.

"Well," she said, "we can't choose who we fall in love with."

 _I am not in love with her_ , he thought, and his ever-persisten subconscious brought one painful old memory to the fore of his mind. More specifically, the last thing Frigga had ever said to him.

 _"Always so perceptive, about everyone but yourself."_

He collapsed back onto the bed and cursed himself for thinking going to Midgard would ever be a good idea.

 **A/N see, as popular as the angst-ridden Loki of Thor and the flat-out evil Loki of Avengers are, my favourite remains to be snarky, bitchy, doesn't-really-give-a-shit Loki of The Dark World, possibly because he's the most like the one in the stories I read as a kid. He's more fun, anyway. I could go for a pint with him- I'd probably be dead by the end of the night, but still. I reckon it would be worth it.**


	12. Chapter 12

The week Ultron decided to throw a tantrum was a very busy one for Gwen, and not just because of the obvious.

Luckily for the Rats all their information was offline, and thus inaccessible to the new villain, but there was still the problem of evil robots trying to kill everything. Ben called back his muscle to protect his own lot, leaving the girls (and James) with half a dozen guns and whatever other weapons they could lay their hands on to defend themselves.

They stowed away underground and barricaded the countless entrances to the basement, which lasted all of two days before one of Ultron's ragdoll bodies decided to tear it down.

"How the hell d'you kill a robot?" Bobby roared, as they sprinted down the corridors followed by what sounded like three of the irregular metal humanoids.

"Go for the head!"

"Isn't that zombies?"

"Only one way to find out!" Gwen yelled, staggering to a halt and turning to face their attackers. "Come on, Tin Man, show us what you got!"

A throaty, metallic chuckle echoed down the passageway. "Trapped like rats," the robot sneered, "how very sweet."

"Oh, you do not appreciate the irony of the situation right now," Gwen muttered, loading shells into the sawn-off shotgun she was carrying.

"You've trapped yourselves, ladies," he continued, the three bodies lumbering forward. "Nobody will hear you screaming down here… nobody to come and save y-"

A deafening shot echoed around the corridor, and Gwen lowered her smoking gun.

"We don't need saving, you misogynist prick," she said, "and apparently, the headshot rule is universal."

"Boss," said Bobby, "there are still two more of them."

Gwen cocked the shotgun. "Not for much longer."

%

The Rats (and James) were cleaning up the damage done by Ultron when a red-faced man turned up on their doorstep, demanding to talk to the boss.

"That's me," said Gwen, raising her hand. "Come on through."

She led him into her office, which was miraculously unscathed, and dropped Algernon on the desk.

"Mae Harris," the man said without prelude, "thirty-one years old, five foot eight with-"

"Hold up," said Gwen, "gimme your name first."

He hesitated. "John Hughes."

"And now your real name," she said, shuffling the papers on her desk.

"Why does it matter?"

"That depends," she said slowly, "on what your name is. But I ain't gonna help you if I don't know it, sir, so I suggest you tell me."

"Aaron Harris," he muttered, and Gwen raised an eyebrow.

"I assume Mae is your wife," she said, and Harris nodded. "Well, we don't do personal. Sorry."

"You don't understand," Harris pressed, "she took our daughter."

Gwen's hands froze over the file she was about to pick up. "And I assume she has a very good reason for that," she said slowly.

"I don't give a damn what reason she has!" Harris snapped, banging his fist on the desk. Gwen's only response was to carefully transfer Algernon into her pocket. "Are you even listening to me?"

"Mr Harris," Gwen said calmly, "your breath stinks of alcohol and your knuckles are bruised." She stood up. "Even if the Rats were to engage in personal business, there is no way in _hell_ I would hand your family back over to you. Now get out of my office."

"Are you insinuating I beat my wife?"

She cocked her head to one side. "Well, yeah. I thought that was obvious." She stood up and leaned against her desk with her arms splayed to either side. "You are an unpleasant little man, Aaron Harris, and I hope you never see your family again. Now get. The hell. Out."

"You bitch," Harris snarled, and kicked a chair as he turned away. He barely made it two steps before a piece of lead piping connected to the back of his head and he staggered, only to be spun round and kicked onto his backside by Gwen.

"I've had a very long few days, and you do _not_ get to call me that and walk away," she spat and kicked him again in the face, sending him sprawling back on the floor. He laughed through a mouthful of blood, limbs splayed about him.

"Why not?" he leered, "it's what you are, it's what you all are. You and her both, filthy sluts- AARGH!"

She had driven the heel of her stiletto boot through the palm of his hand.

"You disgust me," she said, and as she twisted her foot he howled in pain again. Two of Ben's hired muscle burst into the room and took in the scene.

"Ma'am?"

"Don't kill him," she said, and as she removed her heel blood spurted from the hole it had created. "I want him to be alive to know he lost to a woman. And let the girls have a go first."

Gwen had not got where she was today by being a good person.

%

"Mouse," said a familiar, smooth voice later that evening, "why are there bloodstains over your floor?"

"Because I have had enough of sexism this week," she muttered, and Loki raised an eyebrow. "I just… it's been a long one. Thor's already gone back to Asgard, so I didn't get a chance to tell you about Sokovia…"

"He did mention Ultron to me," Loki said, "what happened?"

"I'll pick you up a newspaper on the way to dinner," she said brusquely.

"Pardon?"

"Dinner. I need a break, and you can laugh at me as I try and figure out how fancy cutlery works," she told him, "you don't get any say in the matter, but I suggest changing your face so people don't freak out. We're gonna do the Ritz."

"Gwen," he said levelly, "I am not going to dinner with you."

She laid a hand on his shoulder- the same hand that had wielded the lead pipe. "For once in your life," she said, "mingle with the proles, posh boy. For me."

 **A/N updating just before I leave for a friend's 18th. If you don't hear from me again, I've either died from alcohol poisoning or fallen down the hill the pub's on and into a ditch, and am now stuck. These are the only two possible outcomes.**


	13. Chapter 13

And that was how Loki found himself in an admittedly very regal Midgardian restaurant, with a Midgardian newspaper in front of him and a Midgardian girl sat opposite.

"So," said Gwen, staring at the silverware in front of her with an intense expression, "which one do I use first?"

"Work from the outside in," Loki advised her, setting aside the newspaper and glancing at the menu with vague distaste. This may have been one of the best restaurants on the planet, according to Gwen, but he doubted their finest dish could hold a candle to the kitchens of Asgard. But he was finally prepared to admit that he would not enjoy the company there quite as much; he could like Gwen without having feelings for her, whatever his subconscious said. Plus, she didn't think he was his father, which was always pleasant.

She looked up at him. "I like your normal face better," she said, narrowing her eyes at his glamour.

"It is an excellent one," he agreed, which made her laugh. A black-jacketed waiter approached the table.

"Can I fetch you some drinks sir, madame?"

"The strongest wine you have," Loki answered for the pair of them, and the man nodded before disappearing. Gwen looked very impressed.

"Cor," she said, "I feel well posh."

"Well you certainly don't sound it. Did you really impale the man with your heel?"

"Yeah, it was awesome. Blood went everywhere, even on the ceiling."

"I noticed," Loki said drily, and the waiter returned to fill their glasses and take their orders. "What are you having?"

"The cheese thing, please."

"Sir?"

"I'm not eating."

"He'll have the same as me," Gwen informed the waiter. "What? I'm paying, anyway. With real money. That I earned. Of my own volition."

"Anything else to add?" Loki asked, as the waiter took their menus.

"Nope. How much do you know about Viking civilisation?" she asked him, out of the blue.

"Very little," he replied, "after the war against Jotunheim, Odin thought it best to stay away from mortals who prayed to us as gods. I was too young to remember anything before that."

"Damn," she said, "I was gonna ask you some questions about it. Nothing better than primary evidence." She tore a hunk of bread off the rolls in the table and dipped it in her wine. "Although I didn't specialise in Scandinavian history, so you're not as interesting as, like, Cicero or whatever."

"Who?" Loki asked.

"Roman politician," she told him through a mouthful of wine. "And lawyer. Won his first court case by making a joke about the prosecution's mum."

"You would rather talk to a _bureaucrat_ than me?" he said, feeling rather affronted.

"Oh," she sighed, "Cicero still ain't even my first choice. Now, Tiberius Gracchus, _there's_ a guy I'd like to buy dinner…" she caught his expression and sniggered. "You are so easy to wind up," she told him.

"Says the woman who nearly killed a man today," Loki retorted, and she shrugged.

"He was asking for it," she said. "Y'know, despite being an elitist bastard who tried to take over the world, you're one of the nicer guys I've met."

"Despicable people always make for the best company," he said, "you being another example."

"Mr Odinson," she said in a funny accent, "ya do know how to make a girl feel special."

"I try my best. Tell me about the stone."

"Oh, right." She downed half her glass of wine before continuing. "So, this part isn't very publically known, but the stone that gave your sceptre its power is what Ultron was gonna use to power his new body, right? 'Cept instead the freak show got a hold of this body and Thor jumpstarted the crystal instead, yeah, and now Stark's butler AI has the body, and the stone to boot, which he uses to shoot lasers out of his forehead and other cool shit like that. And obviously, right, that would be a threat, but apparently he's like, capable of lifting your big brother's hammer so they all trust him."

"Say that last part again," Loki said slowly.

"He's worthy." The glimmer in Gwen's eyes indicated she had already guessed how much it annoyed Loki that someone else could lift the hammer and not him. "But the crux of it is, this mind-control stone is safe from whotsisface."

"Thanos."

"That's what I said. Unless he tries to rip it out of this new bloke's forehead, but like I said, he's got a laser face, which would make that difficult."

"Don't underestimate him," Loki muttered, and she gave him a cool look.

"So this hammer," she said with the ghost of a grin, "it's, like, your complex _and_ your power fantasy. Blimey, Freud would have a field day with you." At that point, the waiter returned and deposited two dishes in front of them, and the girl's expression faltered as she faced the problem of what fork to use. "Uh oh."

"Having trouble?" he asked innocently.

"It's been ten years since I last used cutlery," she said, picking something up from either side with a large amount of difficulty. "Right…" she dropped the knife into her food, sighed, and picked up another one.

Loki grabbed her hand just as she went to fumble it again, his fingers brushing against her coarse skin. "Mouse," he said.

"What?" Her eyes still made him feel uncomfortable when she fixed her stare upon him like that.

He started to grin. "Fuck it," he said, and she started to laugh as she dropped the utensils and scooped up the food with her fingers.

"You are a terrible influence on me," she said through a mouthful, and neither of them mentioned that he was still holding her other hand. He let go as soon as he realised but the sensation of her skin against his seemed to linger, the thought of her hand on him again making his heart race.

Loki swore under his breath.

"What is it now?" Gwen asked, already halfway through her meal.

 _I think I might be in love with you._ "I just noticed Algernon in your pocket. You brought your pet mouse to dinner with you… I don't even know what to say to that."

"He gets lonely," she said reproachfully, "and James is working late, so he couldn't keep an eye on him."

"He's a mouse, Gwen! What's he going to do, throw a banquet and wreck the kitchen?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Gwen snapped, "he's way too sensible to do that."

"I can't believe I'm having this conversation," he said flatly, "this is why Midgardians are tearing each other apart. You're all idiots."

"You got slam-dunked by the Hulk!"

"How do you even _know_ about that?" he demanded.

"Stark took the CCTV footage and put it on youtube, it's got about two billion views."

"I understood precisely none of that."

"Starving children in Africa have probably seen you getting the shit beaten out of you by an angry green guy," she explained, "the freakin' Dalai Lama's probably seen it. I will bet large sums of money that Obama's got a shortcut to it on his browser homepage-"

"I will kill you and feed your eyes to carrion if you carry on talking."

"You are so rude," she said, dipping her hands in her water glass to wash them before wiping them on the tablecloth. "Learn some manners, posh boy."

"Out of all the people in the Nine Realms," he said softly, "I had to get stuck with your delightful company."

He liked the way she smiled at that; it was a mix of "I am here only to annoy you" and, beneath that, her seeming to be quite flattered. When she smiled, she could almost be mistaken for pretty.

Damn his subconscious to Hel and back.

 **A/N I'm alive!**


	14. Chapter 14

_God bless the internet_ , Gwen thought, closing her laptop after having looked up ballet class times for ten-year-olds in Warwick. _Time for the daily mantra._ "I am not a stalker, I am not a stalker, she is my daughter, I am not a stalker."

"You know," said a voice from the doorway, "if you have to tell yourself you aren't something, you probably are. Also, stalker's practically your job description."

Gwen looked up to see Bobby leaning against the doorframe of her office. "No it's not," she said, "stalkers follow people for personal reasons. We do it professionally."

"Whatever you say, boss," Bobby grinned.

"I deeply regret hiring you sometimes."

Bobby shrugged. "We got that guy Martoni wanted us to," she said, and chucked a thick wad of twenty dollar bills onto Gwen's desk.

"I take it all back," she said, checking the money was legit, "you're employee of the month."

"So," said Bobby, picking at her nails, "why does a supposedly dead Norse god keep turning up?"

Gwen's eyes flicked from the money to the girl as she slowly figured out what to say. Denial would be pointless, as would trying to deflect the question, so it was best just to get on with it, she figured. "How many people know?"

"Just me and Jen, who's tailing Thor. Figured you wouldn't exactly want it broadcasted."

"How'd you guess?"

"Mysterious British guy who looks a _bit_ like the bloke who tried to take over the world a couple of years ago pops up around the place, and one of us is tailing the only other Asgardian we know about. How does he make himself look different, anyway?"

"Magic," said Gwen vaguely. Loki no doubt would have come up with some elaborate and silver-tongue explanation, but she couldn't afford the words to spare.

Bobby snorted. "I honestly don't know what I was expecting. So why aren't we all dead yet?"

"Because there's no point, apparently," Gwen told her, locking away the money in her safe. "Which is only slightly reassuring. I'm going out tonight, will you keep an eye on the other Rats for me?"

"Sure," said Bobby, "for a fee."

Grumbling, Gwen pulled a few bills from a different drawer, scrunched them up and lobbed them at Bobby's head, who caught them one-handed with a laugh. "Don't spend it all at once."

"Yeah, yeah. Where ya going, anyway?"

%

By the time she arrived at the Museum of Natural History it was well past closing time, but that was the point. A woman in a suit was waiting outside, and smiled as Gwen approached.

"Good evening, Miss Muris, if you would like to follow me inside." She unlocked the door and held it open as Gwen, feeling very important, walked in with a slightly open mouth. "The museum is open entirely for your viewing pleasure, once you're finished, or if you have any questions, I will be right here at the reception desk. There is a security guard in the Hall of Minerals, but apart from that it's just you and the exhibits."

"Thank you," said Gwen, trying to tip the woman, but she just shook her head.

"It's Mr Botelli's and my pleasure, Miss Muris. And happy birthday."

When she was out of ear- and eyeshot, Gwen laughed and broke into a run as she entered the first hall of exhibits. She hesitated to pull up some music on her phone and, with old-school Rolling Stones blaring out of her back pocket at full volume, danced her way through the history.

She ended up in an exhibit about Vikings, and sniggered when she saw a frieze depicting the Norse gods. The caricature of Loki was pale-haired and hook-nosed, she was delighted to see, but his expression- a mix of malice and amusement- was surprisingly accurate. She blinked and noticed a fine-boned, dark-haired man's face reflected in the glass protecting the frieze, its sea-coloured eyes watching her and overlaid atop the caricature's blue ones. _What if that's just another glamour?_ she thought. _Like Gwen is just another false name._ And even if it was, well, what did it matter? _Even if they're not who we're supposed to be, I still feel a hell of a lot comfier being called Gwen than my birth name._ Her identity, like everything else she had done since she lost Lucy, was her choice.

"Are you _following_ me?" she asked the reflection, then turned around to stare at the man- god- himself. British sea, that was the true colour of his eyes- not the clear cerulean of the tropics, but a mix of blue and green and steel, freezing cold and ever-moving. Eyes like that were not to be trusted…

Old words came back to her, words that she had read long ago; " _I am Loki, who is fire and wit and hate. I am Loki. And I will be under an obligation to no one."_ Words that had sunk into her subconscious and shaped her, guided her, made her of stone and loyal only to herself… and here she was, meeting the eye of the man whom they were crafted for, without fear or the feeling of inferiority.

"Why history?" he asked, "of all things."

"So I can learn from other people's mistakes," she smiled, "you didn't answer my question."

"No, mouse, I just happened to develop a sudden interest in human antiquities. Why are you here?"

"Birthday present from Ben," she said. "He pulled a few strings- it makes you realise how corrupt and festering this city really is. Dirtier than the superheroes make it look."

"Must be good for the rodent population, though," he remarked, and she smirked.

"Thanks for the present, by the way- oh wait! You didn't get me one." She clapped him on the shoulder.

He rolled his eyes _._ "Mouse, I need to talk to you."

"Talk away," she said.

He took a deep breath. "Your habits are revolting," he began, "you have no respect for authority and your attachment to that rodent is, quite frankly, disturbing. Your ego is as massive as you are small, you don't think before you open your mouth, you-"

He was cut off by Gwen punching him in the face, as hard as he could.

"Ow, _shit_!" she shrieked, wringing her hand. "Your face is like fucking… titanium diamonds!"

Loki appeared unscathed by the punch, but he looked fuming; he grabbed her shirt and pulled her close so that the tip of her nose was barely an inch from his.

"Please don't kill me," she said.

And then he kissed her. For the first time in eleven years Gwen was being kissed, and for the first time in her _life_ she was enjoying it.

One of his hands was balled up in her hair, and the other was pressed against the back of her neck as his teeth dragged along her lower lip, pulling on her piercing, the tip of his nose knocking against her septum ring. _Sod it_ , she thought, and wrapped her arms around him as she kissed him back, pressing her hips into him hungrily as his hand moved from her neck to slip under her shirt, skin against skin. She hooked her legs around his waist, he pulled her backwards and they fell, in a tangled heap, onto one of the countless stone benches in the middle of the hall.

"I want you to know," Loki said breathlessly as she tore away his shirt, "this was not part of the plan."

"Seconded."

 **A/N fiiinally. Updating early because Christmas. EDIT: forgot to mention earlier, the "I am Loki" quote is from Sandman, because why quote the Edda or other myths or Norse texts when there's cult horror comics from the 90s?**


	15. Chapter 15

Loki infinitely preferred this to their previous arrangement.

Gwen was sat in the dressing robe that was far too short (she must have stolen it from the hotel) and nothing else, with her legs splayed in such a way that any Asgardian woman would have had a fit to look at her. The brilliant dawn sky outside matched her hair perfectly, and in its light he could see her eyes weren't black, as he had originally thought, but a dark brown- the same colour as earth after rain. He lay on the floor and kissed her ankle, then slowly worked his way up the inside of her leg as she threw back her head and laughed.

When he pressed his lips to her neck, she moaned in the same way she had when imagining the power of a king. And when she slept, she curled up like a mouse with her head tucked up against his side. While she slumbered he would count the marks on her skin; freckles and birth marks and scars, including puncture marks up the inside of her arms and an ugly one under her ribcage he recognised as a stab wound. A puckered, fading line ran across the base of her stomach- when he ran a finger across it she screwed up her face and pulled away, all without waking up.

She was as far from perfect as one person could be, and he loved her all the more for it. _If only my family could see me now_ , he thought idly, _well, perhaps not at this precise moment…_

Gwen opened one eye. "Stop looking at me like that," she mumbled, voice cracked with sleep.

"I will not be told what to do by a mere human," he said, and kissed the tip of her nose. "But for you, I could be pressed to make an exception."

"You're going to have to go back to Asgard at some point," she reminded him, "and I need to feed Algernon."

"Not to mention your network of spies."

"They can look after themselves," she whispered, "too bad Asgard can't. Guess that says a lot about which is the superior species…" she yawned.

"Don't push it, mouse. Just because you're in my bed, doesn't mean you can stay there."

"It's my bed, actually."

"Don't be so literal," he told her, pulling the woman on top of him and pushing her hair back from her face. "When did you get so beautiful?"

"When your biased arse started paying attention," she said.

"About ten seconds ago, then."

"Hilarious." She kissed him lightly. "Would you rather I ruled by your side, your supreme magnificence? As your loyal and devoted queen at the head of a morally dubious feudal system?"

"By the light of Yggdrasil, never," he replied, "you'd be abominable as a monarch. Why, would you rather I stayed here in a city of sin with you?"

"You'd never stop interfering." He loved the way she smiled; it was almost like a warning sign, a precursor to trouble and wickedness. "Seriously, we should get up."

"We should do a lot of things," he replied, "whether we will or not is another matter entirely." He knocked the ring through her nose with his finger. "Why do you wear these?"

"Why did you wear a helmet with dirty great big antlers on it?" she retorted.

He laughed. "Excellent point."

"I'm full of them. Ask me another question."

"Where did the scar on your stomach come from?"

She laid down back at his side again. "They had to cut Lucy out of me, or I wouldn't have survived the birth. I would give you the whole story, but you'd probably throw up. I did, several times."

"Thank you for sharing that with me."

"You're very welcome," she smirked, and someone hammered on the door.

"If you're quite finished," a female voice yelled, "there's an Avenger here to see you."

The two of them sat up in unison. "Which one?" Gwen called back, exchanging a worried glance with Loki.

"Hot, red hair, threatening expression."

"Black Widow," said Gwen, "she was barely ever in the Tower when I worked there, so she won't recognise me." She rolled out of bed and started pulling on clothes at top speed. "Put on a glamour and listen if you want, I know she's one of your favourite people."

Ten minutes later, Gwen was sat comfortably in her desk chair and Loki, wearing the form of a burly and heavily-tattooed Midgardian, was stood behind her.

"Miss Romanoff," Gwen said brightly, chewing her gum, "what can I do for you today?"

The Widow's face remained impassive. "My colleagues don't know I'm here," she said, "they would rather pursue this case via more legitimate pathways. I, however, am not afraid to get my hands dirty."

Loki snorted, and the two women turned to glare at him.

"Is there a problem?" Gwen asked, "because if there is, you can always leave."

"No."

"No what?"

He gritted his teeth. "No… ma'am."

"That's better. Breaking in a new recruit," she said, turning back to the Avenger, "they can get ideas a little above their station sometimes."

Romanoff said nothing, and instead just threw a file onto the desk. As Gwen opened it, her eyes widened in recognition.

"This Winter Soldier is a popular guy," she said, "you're not the first to ask about him."

"HYDRA?" Romanoff asked, and Gwen nodded.

"Lucky for you, we don't make a habit of serving Nazis. You do realise the Rats don't have a reach outside of New York, right?"

"Before he was the Winter Soldier, this man lived in Brooklyn," she explained, "we have reason to believe he may have returned here."

"He did," said Gwen, "but he's not here anymore."

"How do you know?" Romanoff asked, and Gwen popped her bubblegum in lieu of an answer. "Fair enough. Find out what you can about his movements while he was here, when he left, and I'll pay you handsomely. Tell us if he comes back and I'll double it."

Black Widow's expression was the exact same one she had when she tricked Loki into revealing his plans; one devoid of emotion. Loki took this as a good sign, since he suspected the woman only showed her feelings when she was lying or manipulating people. At current, she was just giving Gwen the facts.

"Nice offer," said Gwen, and closed the file. "Can I keep this?" Romanoff inclined her head. "It's a pleasure doing business with you, then. You can pick up the weapons my boys took off you on the way out."

"I hope I'll see you again," Romanoff said with a slight curl to her lips, and left the office. Gwen waited until the sound of the front door slamming drifted up to them before spinning round to look at Loki, who dropped the ugly glamour at the first opportunity.

"Not the first time someone's asked me about this guy," Gwen said exasperatedly, waving the file in the air. "HYDRA, some weird chick who kept talking to herself, and now miss spider lady. You are causing a hell of a lot of trouble, Bucky Barnes," she murmured, eyes unfocused as they lay on the file. "Some very important people care a lot about you. Not to mention that poor girl… she looked sick to death of worry."

"I thought you didn't do personal," Loki said.

"I don't, so despite the fact she looked about as dangerous as a wet flannel I turned her away." She tilted her head back to look at him. "You look really good in leather, by the way."

"That's why I wear it." He bent down to kiss her forehead. "Have fun with your empire, mouse. I have my own throne to get back to."

"Mine's totally better, though."

"So long as you're happy in your delusions."

 **A/N writing dialogue between Gwen and Loki is so much fun because I've never before had to deal with two complete narcissists at once.**


	16. Chapter 16

"YOU CALLED HER A CRYING VAGINA?!"

"Keep your voice down," Loki hissed, putting his hand over Gwen's mouth as he dragged her into a less crowded part of the museum. "And those weren't the exact words I used."

"Dude," she said, pulling his hand away, "that is so sexist. Admittedly I have called you a stroppy dick on several occasions, but that was warranted."

"Are you finished chastising me?" Loki asked, and reluctantly Gwen nodded. "I have a question to ask you."

"About what?"

"History."

Her face lit up. "Yay!"

"To think that you've killed people," Loki smirked.

"Just ask me the question, idiot."

They both sat down on a bench in a shadowy corner. "When I was in Stuttgart during the week of the Chitauri invasion-"

"Is this about the man who stood up?"

He looked at her. "How did you know?"

"He kinda became a symbol," she explained to him, "of the civilian resistance to tyrants. He got a medal and everything from the UN, it was lovely."

"He said… he said that there are always men like me."

That was the simple sentence, captured on a dozen CCTV cameras, that had made the elderly man more heroic, more iconic in Gwen's eyes, than all of the Avengers combined. "Well," she shrugged, "choosing to start your campaign to take over the world in Germany was probably a mistake. One man made that country tear itself apart, which led to the biggest war the world has ever seen. You remember _Catch-22_? It's set during that war."

"What happened?"

"Are you sure?" she asked him. "You really wanna get into this? Because it is gonna take a hell of a long time to explain, and it really isn't going to increase your faith in humanity."

"To be honest," Loki admitted, "I'll probably just stop listening halfway through and take the opportunity to enjoy the view."

"Cute," she grinned, "albeit a bit weird."

He held out his arms. "Educate me."

%

That night, alone in her office, Gwen put her head in her hands and cried.

She had built up so much for herself- friends, a small underground empire, a nice wardrobe, Loki. Five years ago she had been a low-level drug dealer, a year ago she had been homeless, six months ago she had been reliant on one other person for her income. And she was grateful for it, she really was, but she was going to have to give all of it up for something more important. For her plan to work, she needed to disappear completely and without warning, or otherwise the Rats would find her. It appeared she had trained them too well.

After five minutes of weakness, she stood up, sorted out her streaky mascara and changed into old, un-badass clothes like the ones she always used to wear, which she could sleep and walk in without feeling ridiculously uncomfortable. She made one last sweep of her office, gave her desk chair a longing look and closed the door behind her before heading downstairs.

She found James in the basement kitchen with Bobby and a couple others, playing a very intense and probably quite corrupt game of Monopoly. James was losing, not least because he kept getting streets confused with the London version of the game.

"I thought I banned capitalist propaganda under my roof," she said.

"That sounds like you, yeah."

"Right - and Bobby," Gwen ordered, "stop giving money to Soph under the table. I know she's your girlfriend, but real business doesn't work like… actually, it does. Carry on."

"Miss!"

"Sorry, James. It's a dog eat dog world out there, and it's a Rat eat valet world in here." She faltered.

"Miss," said James, slightly quieter as the others continued to fight over the last pale blue space, "are you all right?"

"I'm fine, James, I just… nothing." She squeezed his shoulder. "Say goodnight to the others for me."

"Yes, miss."

"Bobby!" she said, suppressing her emotions.

"What?"

"My dazzling, beautiful, magnificent second in command. There's a gun in the second drawer of my desk, a couple of knives in the lining of my chair and the code to the safe is James' birthday."

Bobby narrowed her eyes. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I love you." She disappeared before anyone could ask her anymore questions, running up to her bedroom and pulling the bag she had packed two weeks previously out of the cupboard. "Goodbye, my own bedroom. It was short but sweet. Goodbye, office with the spinny chair and filing system only I understand. Have a nice life without me, home."

Gwen stared at the bed that she was no longer scared of, and thought about, how, the first time she had been on it with Loki, he had taken her and held her so she was lying on _him_ , not it. It had probably just been a ploy to ensure she didn't freak out and that he got laid, but still, it had meant something to her, that he had even remembered that.

She thought of the way Loki held her – at the waist, his thumb at the bottom of her ribcage and his smallest finger curving over her hip – and how he always rolled away from her when he slept. Then, because she was getting quite emotional again, Gwen immediately tried to stop thinking about it, or how he grinned as he kissed her…

 _Drat._

She grabbed her papers, ticket and excellently forged passport, went downstairs and fetched Algernon.

"It's just you and me again, buddy," she said to the mouse, tucking him into her coat pocket. "Not for long, hopefully, and I gotta figure out how to get you through security first. Still, you should be easier than the knife."

She was already out of the building; she turned around, saluted it one last time, and started to make her way to the airport.

 _I'm coming, Lucy._

 **A/N aaand the honeymoon period is over. PLUS we hit 100 followers! AHHH! Also, a bit of admin - hlflores, I answered your review in a private message, did you get it? It was quite long. If you didn't, the general gist of it was that all your questions will be answered sooner or later, and also that there's not going to be that typical solution of "turn the mortal Asgardian and cue the happy ever after music", partially because Gwen's too proud and too human for that, and partially because I want the obvious problems in their relationship to be addressed, directly, without loopholes. This fic isn't meant to be a tragedy, but it's not a fairytale either. I wanted to make it as realistic as you could get with, like, aliens and gods and stuff. So... not that realistic really, but whevs. Apologies for the long A/N, too. I'll shut up now.**


	17. Chapter 17

"James!"

"Sir?"

"Where's Gwen?"

"Don't know, sir, I thought she was with… oh, you've gone."

Her office clearly hadn't been entered for a while and the door to her bedroom was locked; Loki cunningly unlocked it by kicking it open, snapping the bolt in two. He knew her well enough to guess where she would hide things, and tore away the false bottom of her wardrobe to find a mess of printed sheets and pages of notes with her messy handwriting on them.

"Mouse, mouse, mouse," he murmured as he rifled through them, "what have you done?"

A receipt for plane tickets to England, the addresses of various establishments in Warwick, including where to hire a car. A list of everything she knew about Lucy. Loki cursed and leapt back onto his feet, and yelled for James.

The valet appeared along with one of the other Rats.

"She's gone to find her daughter," he told them, "she reached England about three hours ago, by the looks of it."

"She'll get arrested," the red-haired woman said, "they won't care about family, they'll just say it's kidnap. Which it is. We need to stop her before she disappears completely."

"I can do that," said Loki, "can you-"

"We'll be fine here," said the woman confidently, "nobody'll even notice she's gone."

Loki nodded briefly to each of them, pulled the crystal out of his pocket and hit the ground of the Asgard cave running. It would take him hours to follow her without leaving Midgard, he couldn't do it with the crystals because he didn't have a clue where she was, which meant there was only one option left to him.

Drat.

After dropping the shell of the used purple crystal, Loki hastily conjured a glamour of a palace guard as he tore through the city, but as soon as he reached the deserted rainbow bridge he dropped it, pouring all of his energy and concentration into sprinting towards the Bifrost.

"Heimdall!" he yelled, staggering to a halt.

In other circumstances, he might have been surprised that the gatekeeper didn't even bat an eyelid at the supposedly-dead prince appearing in front of him. Now he was just grateful. "You want to find the girl?"

Loki nodded, trying to get his breath back.

"Be careful you aren't seen," Heimdall said simply, turning away from him and plunging his sword deeper into its mount. Loki felt himself being dragged into the white, surging light of the Bifrost, experienced the once familiar sensation of his breath being torn out of him as he hurtled through the Universe-

In a blaze of light in every colour, Loki's feet hit rain-dampened tarmac and a car's horn blared as it swerved to avoid him on the otherwise-deserted road. Before it overtook him, he pulled out one of his throwing knives and flung it at the tyre; the car skidded to a halt. Gwen leaped out of it and stormed towards him as the heavens rained down upon them.

"What the hell are you doing here?!" she roared at him, her rapidly soaking hair plastered across her face.

"Stopping you from being thrown into gaol!"

"I can't let you do that," she said, and he saw the light of a streetlamp glint off of the switchblade in her hand.

"Have you gone _insane_?"

"I don't want to kill you, Loki, just stop you coming after us." There was a glint in her eyes he recognised from looking in the mirror, a diamond flash that was the sign of a desperate being. "You have to let me go, don't be selfish."

"You think I'm doing this because I'm selfish?" he yelled back, "I'm stopping you because this is insanity!"

"She's my CHILD!"

"That girl is nothing to you but your victim!" he roared, and instantly regretted it.

The diamond glitter in Gwen's eyes turned to fire. She gritted her teeth and lunged towards him with the fast, desperate movements of someone who had learned to fight on the streets, and Loki pulled his smallest knife out of its guard. It was imbued with a venom that would weaken a frost giant, and would undoubtedly knock out the tiny Midgardian. He ducked and wrenched her outstretched arm behind her and she twisted under him to avoid getting it broken, and her foot connected with his knee; he buckled on one leg and dragged her down onto the floor with him.

"Think about this, Gwen!"

"I have!" she screamed at him, tears mixing with the rain. "This is all I've thought about, Loki! I'm sorry, but-"

"So am I," he said, and they both looked down at the tiny sliver of a blade embedded in her thigh.

Loki caught her as she collapsed sideways, lifted her up and carried her back to the now-useless car. It wasn't until he dumped her prone form in the back seat that he noticed the little girl curled up in the front, staring at him through the headrest.

"Who are you?" she asked, dark eyes massive with curiosity and fear.

"I'm going to take you home," said Loki, "or at least to the nearest town." He hesitated- he had just knocked out his lover, and now he had to deal with a child. What did one even do with children? All he had ever done was hand them off onto someone else upon the first opportunity, but that did not seem to be an option here. "Your name's Lucy, yes?"

"Yeah."

"Lucy, I'm going to come round and open your door. Please don't scream."

"I want to stay here," she said quietly, "it's cold and wet outside, and my mummy says not to talk to strangers." It was uncanny, how similar that stare was to Gwen's.

"You either come with me or you stay here on your own, catch hypothermia and probably die," he told her, and the girl's bottom lip stuck out.

"Did you kill the lady?"

"No," said Loki, "surprisingly not. She's just asleep." _Damn the woman for softening me._

"She said she was my mummy," Lucy told him, "but I haven't seen her before."

"She's not, she just… had you confused with someone else."

"Will we get into trouble?"

"Not if I have anything to do with it." He took Gwen's coat off of her and folded it beneath her head as a pillow before going round and opening Lucy's door. "Out."

"But it's raining."

Loki scowled and pulled off his own Midgardian-style leather jacket, leaving him only with his hooded one, which might as well have not existed for the amount of good it was doing against the onslaught. It dwarfed the little girl and she pulled the collar up over her head as Loki checked the car- sure enough, Algernon was curled up and asleep in a cupholder.

"Come on," he told Lucy, and started to walk down the road. After a few yards, he realised he was not being followed, and turned around to see the child stood adamantly by the car.

"I'm tired," she said adamantly, and with her jaw jutted out she looked yet more like the woman asleep in the vehicle. "And my legs are much littler than yours."

"And your point is?" Loki said.

"Carry me."

"No."

"Please?"

"No."

"I won't move unless you carry me."

Loki scowled. _I hate children,_ he thought, and picked Lucy up. She scrambled onto his shoulders and finally, the odd pair set off towards the light of a town on the horizon. After about ten minutes Lucy fell asleep, so he lifted her down from his shoulders and held her in his arms as he walked so she wouldn't fall. He preferred her like this. She was much less annoying.

"In my experience," he told her, "adopted children are a lot more trouble than they're worth. You and I both seem to cause a lot of problems, Lucy."

%

It took about an hour to reach the nearest town, and Loki conjured up a glamour as he entered the centre of it. Through the window of a nearby store a screen was showing the Midgardian news, and he slowed down to hear what the presenter was saying.

"Police have widened the search internationally since it was revealed that Lucy's birth mother moved to the USA after leaving home. Authorities have released information which tells us that her mother was not granted permission to see her daughter and that nobody has heard from her in almost a decade.

"Meanwhile, the CCTV footage of Lucy with the pink-haired woman remains the police's only lead, but if it is her biological mother then this innocent girl stands a much greater chance of being found."

On the screen there was a grainy image of two figures- one shorter than the other and one with strands of peach coloured hair poking out from beneath her hood- along with a picture of Lucy, and what Loki guessed was a teenage Gwen. She was almost unrecognisable; her face was much fuller and her hair fell about her face in dark curtains, hiding most of it from view. It wasn't _his_ Gwen, the one who had to fight for every moment of survival; this was a girl who still had her innocence.

There was a large building with "POLICE" over the lintel across the street. Loki strode into it, deposited the still-slumbering child in his arms on the reception desk, pulled his jacket off of her and turned to the bemused-looking woman at the desk.

"This is Lucy Ward," he told her, and walked away.

%

Loki had excellent night vision, and as he approached the car he saw that the back seat was empty. _Of course it is. Because I dared to presume that this evening could not possibly get any worse._

She couldn't have got far, and besides, Gwen was too clever to run when the whole world was hunting for her, so she must be nearby… there was a wide-trunked oak tree overhanging the road, the only place in the area that would make a decent hiding-spot aside from the car, which she would have guessed he would look around first. Loki considered what to do next, and reverted back into his Asgardian garments.

Well-made leather boots splashed into black puddles as the god of mischief walked into the middle of the road. "Gwen!" he called out, and turned his back on the tree.

She sprinted out from behind the tree and lunged towards him, going to wrap her arm around his neck and hold her blade to his throat. But as soon as her hand made contact he – or rather, the shade of him - disappeared in a shimmer of green light and Gwen faltered, thrown for just a moment.

A moment was all Loki needed- he himself ran out from behind the car and grabbed _her_ from behind, and lifted her feet off of the floor as she screamed and struggled.

"HEIMDALL!" he roared into the stormy night, "If you would be so kind!"

"What are you doing?!" she bawled at him, and shrieked as they were enveloped in rainbow light.

The journey to Asgard seemed to take both forever and no time at all, and Gwen used the impact of landing to wrench herself out of his grasp. She took just two seconds to take in her gleaming golden surroundings, then turned back to him with an expression of sheer fury on her face.

"WHY DID YOU STOP ME?!" she shouted, her cheeks painted black with the mascara that had run down them. "I WAS SO CLOSE, YOU BASTARD!"

"It was never going to work!" he yelled back at her. "She was better off without you-"

"SHE WASN'T! She's the only family I've got, Loki, I can't-"

"She is _not_ your family! Lucy Ward's family are the people that took her in and raised her, not you."

"THEN I'VE GOT _NOTHING_!" she howled, fresh tears carving pathways down her face.

"You have me! Family is what you make for yourself, Gwen, not shared blood. If it was, I would be in Jotun instead of stopping you ruining your life." He started towards her, but a heavy hand across his chest prevented him from leaving.

"You just took her only daughter from her," Heimdall said quietly. Loki opened his mouth to argue, but the other Asgardian cut him off. "I am not saying you were mistaken for doing so, but… let her grieve."

Behind him, Gwen had fallen to her knees on the floor, and was sobbing into her hands.

"I lost her," she wailed, "I lost her all over again."

Loki, famed for his silver tongue, tried to find something to say. But all that came out was, "I'm sorry."

It wasn't even his fault. He must have loved her, he realised then, to go from trying to destroy entire realms without guilt, to apologising for something that was not even his fault. With a sigh he knelt down beside her and pulled the woman onto his lap, cradling her as she broke down.

"I have you, little mouse. Be calm," he murmured, "I have you."

 **A/N so when this fic was only meant to be 20k words long, this was the climax. And then... I got really carried away, and the current amount I have prewritten is closer to 80k. But yes - plot things are happening! DRAMA! The characters doing something other than flirting and bickering! Yay!**


	18. Chapter 18

Gwen vaguely remembered being carried somewhere, getting dropped onto a narrow bed, and then, when the room was dark and empty, crawling off the bed and curling up on the floor. When she woke up, the man with the golden eyes explained to her where she was and to the woman's credit, she did not even bat an eyelid.

Heimdall's home was tiny, especially considering the size of the man who it belonged to; it also had a very unlived-in feel to it. Gwen sat at the well-scrubbed table and let Algernon run around on its surface, gently shoving him back to the middle every time he got too close to the edge.

"So they think your mum's sick?" she asked the golden-eyed man sitting opposite her in a hoarse voice. "Do you even have parents? I sorta get the impression you're eternal."

"Not quite," Heimdall smiled. Even outside of the giant golden dome, his voice still seemed to echo. "How did you sleep?"

"I didn't. But I'll be fine, I think. I'm good at having to cope with stuff." She rubbed her eyes. "It's just that… I feel like I should be sad, but I guess I kinda screamed all of that out of me yesterday, and now I'm just, like… empty. And tired. Weary to my bones."

"Fatigue," Heimdall told her, "I've seen it in too many soldiers after a lost battle. Fatigue and listlessness, since their grand plans have all surmounted to nothing. Many people try to write it off as denial, but I've often seen a man whom the hollowness has not left."

"Oh, _great._ "

"But you have more reason to recover than they," Heimdall pointed out. "And I do not expect one such as yourself to be defeated so easily."

She peered through her fingers at him. "Oh, really? What's one such as myself, then?"

"I speak from experience of similar characters," he said, "namely, one silvertongue."

"Huh." She leaned forward and pressed her palms against her forehead, thinking of her absent lover. "Gods, Loki must be so pissed off at me. Even _I'm_ pissed off at me, and I'm me."

"Loki has a short temper," Heimdall admitted, "and he does not find it easy to forgive."

"I was kind of hoping you would drop a 'but' at the end of that sentence."

"Ruling Asgard has made him wiser, I suspect," he said. "I suppose that may work in your favour."

"About that," said Gwen, "you knew, didn't you? I can tell by the look on your face, you knew he was pretending to be Odin. Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because Odin has ruled Asgard for millennia," Heimdall replied, "and I know that he would never kill his father, whatever he might say about him. Odin may not be where we can see him, but I don't doubt that he is alive. Most likely furious, but alive. And besides, I have always found that the best way to keep Loki out of trouble is to give him what he wants. He's not foolish, he knows how to rule better than his brother, and while he has many of his own, he lacks some of Odin's faults."

"You strike me as being cleverer than the pair of them," Gwen grinned, and Heimdall inclined his head.

"Far too clever to want the crown," he said, which made her laugh.

"You must have known him all his life. Loki, I mean."

"Not too far from it," said Heimdall. "That being said… if the Allfather _is_ dead at his hands, I shall not hesitate in breaking his spine."

"Fair enough. Mind if I ask you stuff? Not really anyone else I can."

"Of course."

"I was, um, I was reading up on Norse mythology, and it said Loki had a wife called Sigyn. I don't want to be his mistress," she said in a rush, "if he's married, I'll have nothing more to do with him-" she hesitated as Heimdall laughed.

"Sigyn was – is – a princess from Vanaheim, Hogun's cousin I believe. She and Loki have been betrothed since birth in order to strengthen relations between the two realms, but it is no secret that she prefers the company of women to men. Practically everyone knew this except the fathers of the two betrothed, so they both agreed that the marriage should go ahead for the sake of their motherlands. Of course, now that Loki is dead this engagement means nothing."

"That's… a lot better than I was expecting," she said with relief. "Is she nice?"

"Exceedingly lovely."

"So she deserved better than Loki, then. And now he's dead, she might be able to get it."

"And yet you think he deserves you."

"I'm not a very nice person," she informed him, "and neither's he. It's a great combination."

Heimdall laughed again. "What do you plan on doing now?"

She bit her lip. "I won't be able to go home until the fuss has died down, which'll take at least a couple of weeks," she said glumly. "And I'll have to beg for forgiveness for the Rats when I do get back since I abandoned them… and all my clients'll be pissed… can I just hide here from all of my problems?"

"What, and give up all your Midgardian luxuries?" Heimdall asked in an amused tone.

"Fair point. Asgard isn't all Loki made it out to be, it turns out. I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and all that shit. Still, it's nicer than London. Although if Thanos turned up and everything went to shit, it still wouldn't be as bad as London." She coughed. "Sorry, I, uh... petty earthly stuff. And this probably means nothing to you… I'll shut up now."

Heimdall gave her a look. "How much do you know about Thanos?"

"He gave Loki the sceptre, he's in space somewhere, and he's really big. Why?"

The Asgardian shifted slightly in his seat. "There is a storm on the horizon bigger than anything any of the Nine Realms have seen before. People throughout the galaxy have been trying to find the relics, the Infinity Stones, for years- the Collector, Galan of Taa- but recently, entire civilisations have come close to being utterly destroyed because of Thanos' desire to wield them, Earth being one of them. Two of the stones have caused war on Midgard in the last three years alone, not to mention the Aether here in Asgard and the Orb on the planet Xandar."

"Cool name. What are the Infinity Stones, anyway? Why does Thanos want them?"

"There are six in total, created before the universe began by an unknown entity or entities- we Asgardians know them as the Relics. They each encapsulate something different, which manifests in their ability- the Mind Stone can be used for cognitive manipulation, while the Tesseract functions as a bridge across space. When used together, the Stones are capable of immeasurable power which few would be able to harness without suddenly embracing their own mortality."

Gwen smiled grimly. "And of course, Thanos is one of the few people who can survive that power."

"I have no knowledge of his exact strength, but I suspect it is even more than the Allfather's. Gwen," said Heimdall gravely, "Loki cannot know of this, for his own good. He is content with Asgard for now, but the concept of so much power could easily tempt and corrupt him."

She nodded. Her… entanglement with the Asgardian did not mean she was blind to his many and various faults. "Who else knows apart from us?"

"Nobody that I know of. It is only because of my ability to see across the realms that I know of it, and I am the only person who can."

"Then why tell me?" she asked.

"Because should something happen to me, the knowledge of what Thanos _might_ be planning cannot die with me. Because nobody will suspect a girl from Midgard. Because… you were here," he finished heavily, "and I trust you have enough knowledge of dictators to know how power corrupts, and would stay away from it yourself."

"All you needed was a human with a history degree. Well, I'm happy to oblige, and slightly terrified of everything now," she told him.

"I am sorry about that."

"I'm kind of stowing away in your house and forcing you to babysit me, so we're probably even," she shrugged. "Thank you for this, by the way."

"I serve my king," replied Heimdall, "in whatever form that may take. You should sleep, girl. You look exhausted."

"I always look exhausted," she mumbled, "because I always _am_ exhausted. I don't sleep, y'know. Sleep is for people who aren't mob bosses with alien boyfriends." She picked up Algernon and carried him over to the pallet bed. "Heimdall?"

"Gwen?"

"D'you think Loki's a bad person?" she asked.

He considered the question. "I think we are at war," he said, "or at least, about to be. And notions such as good and bad mean nothing when all people should be striving for is to be alive."

"Very smooth avoiding of the question."

"Do you think he is bad?" Heimdall asked her, one eyebrow raised.

"Don't believe in morality," she said shortly, "too busy getting on with my life to worry about good and evil, and I reckon that's what he thinks too." She chuckled at herself. "Probably a stupid idea bringing this up. I think… if he was a bad person, if there was such a thing, then I would be too. But morality is a luxury we both lost a long time ago."

Heimdall nodded. "Get some rest, Gwen. I'm sure Thanos won't attack for at least a few hours yet."

"That is _not_ funny."

 **A/N Because there is** ** _no god damn way_** **that Heimdall doesn't know about Loki. (GOD damn, get it? Because they're all gods? I'M HILARIOUS. HA. HA.) Additionally, while I have many songs I listen to while writing this that suit the theme of it really well, literally within the last half an hour I've discovered Broken Bones by Kaleo. If this fic had opening credits, that would be the song to play over them.**


	19. Chapter 19

By the time Loki could escape from the palace to Heimdall's home, night had fallen and Gwen was asleep, while the gatekeeper leaned on the narrow doorframe and watched the few stars that managed to shine through the glow of the buildings.

"You know," he said, as Loki walked past him, "she isn't the woman I imagined you settling with."

"We're far from settled," said Loki, "and out of curiosity, what _were_ you envisaging?"

"An Asgardian, for one thing. An extremely patient woman who wouldn't argue back, perhaps. Someone more… visually impressive."

"Well, you were astoundingly wrong in that respect. And watch your tongue about her, gatekeeper."

"I meant no offence. I can almost believe she suits you better."

"As can I," he said, "almost. How long have you known I was alive?"

"Since you allowed Thor to decline the throne," Heimdall told him, "Odin was far too proud of his work grooming his son to be king to let it go."

"Does anyone else know?"

"Of course not," Heimdall said, "your silver tongue has finally found its calling."

He laughed softly. "Resume your post, Heimdall, and dismiss the guards I left at the Bifrost in your absence."

"Gladly, my lord." He left the building, and Loki wandered over to Gwen's bag, which was dumped in a corner.

Considering what she had achieved in the last year, Gwen had left her home with barely more than what she had started with. A change of clothes, enough food to last her and Algernon a week, her forged papers, her battered pair of bronze knuckles, and one of his knives. It was blunt and tarnished, so she must have taken it with her for sentimental reasons. There were also a few books; her old copy of _Catch-22_ , a children's tale, a compendium of Cicero's letters, and _Captain Corelli's Mandolin._ Loki had held a grudge against Cicero ever since Gwen had mentioned she would rather have dinner with the Roman than him, _Corelli_ looked to be another damn war story, and he had read 22, so he sat at the end of her bed and started reading the child's story.

"Hey."

As he finished the book an hour or so later, Loki looked up to see that Gwen was watching. He was struck at that moment by how far she had come from the filthy little street rat he had found, all that time ago _._ That creature had been capable of small tricks, no doubt, but the one curled up before him could claim worlds as her own with barely an effort. "Hello. Have you come to your senses yet?"

"If you talk to me like that I'm going back to sleep," she said levelly.

"Sorry."

"It's fine," she sighed, teasing the knots out of her hair, "you've got a point. It was a stupid idea, I get that now. I'm sorry."

"There's no reason to apologise to me," he said, "I had only to hunt you down to the other side of Midgard, spend hours carrying an incredibly annoying child to the nearest sign of civilisation, and reveal my identity to one of the most powerful people in Asgard. Really, no need at all."

"You're such a twat," she mumbled, and Loki held out his arm. She crawled over to him and curled up at his side, her feet in his lap and her forehead on his collarbone. "Thanks for not letting me get arrested."

"I refuse to share you with the Midgardian authorities," he informed her, and kissed her forehead.

"Y'know," she said, "when Cicero's daughter died, he definitely reacted a lot worse than I did. He just wandered round in the woods for three months, crying."

"How very Midgardian of him."

"He said in a letter, he said… 'I have lost the one thing which tied me to life.'" Her voice broke on the last word. "What am I going to do now, Loki?"

"Stay here for a week or two and slink back into the Rats' burrow when the dust has settled." He smiled as she groaned. "A whole other world to explore, mouse, another timeline's worth of history. Surely that will keep you entertained for a fortnight."

"Mmm. I can't help but notice you're reading a kids' book," she said, tracing his knuckles with her finger. "First John Donne and now this."

"Well it was the only one you had that wasn't set on Midgard, which I see more than enough of already."

"Still a kids' book, though."

"Hardly the sort of stories I was read as a child."

"Let me guess," she said, "they involved the princess being rescued from the monster by a dashing young man, when all others have failed."

Loki laughed. "How did you know?"

"Some things never change, regardless of what realm they're in." She rose up onto her knees, and he felt her narrow fingers brush against his cheek. "Another being that I'm kind of in love with you."

He pressed his forehead against hers. "Only kind of?"

"I have to play it down," she whispered, "or it might go to your head."

When her face was this close, he could lose himself in her eyes and forget all her many flaws. "I am sorry about your daughter, mouse. Truly."

They were big, sad eyes, and they held inside them trapped worlds of pain and love. "I know. I am too. But I'll heal – I'll get better. I'll be the best damn thing that's ever happened to this universe, just you wait and see."

"A little vain, don't you think?"

"Hypocrite."

Loki could see she was hurting – it was so easy to read her, sometimes, due to the simple fact that it was like looking in a mirror. And because of that, he decided to let her hide that pain. If there was one thing he had learned, it was that stoicism was a necessary lie, for people like them. So he let her pretend, and when she cried again he, in turn, pretended that he could not see.

It was the closest they could come to healing.

%

He should have guessed that, Gwen being involved, there would be some difficulties.

"I am not going anywhere near that palace," she said flatly, arms crossed as they stood on either side of Heimdall's table.

"Why not? Being a wench would mean you having an excuse for being around, and you wouldn't be sat here doing nothing."

"One," she began, ticking reasons off on her fingers, "maybe I'm enjoying doing nothing, for a change. Two, I refuse to be called a wench, since it's nearly as bad as whore and besides, it sounds like seafood. Three, that palace is the epitome of a feudal system which I have spent my entire adult life morally opposed to. Four, being a maid in Stark Tower is one thing, Asgard another entirely. Five, it has really high towers and shit and I'm really afraid of heights. Six-"

"Fine!" Loki snapped, "you won't be a wen- a maid. We could perpetuate that you're a guest from one of the other realms, which is technically true-"

"All of the previous reasons 'cept for two and four apply to that as well, and also I can't pull off posh and nobby. I just want to go _home_ ," she whined.

"Well I'm sorry, darling, but that's impossible. So unless you have any other ideas?"

"Does Heimdall need an apprentice?"

"Does he strike you as the sort of person to consider retiring? Ever?" Loki was about to continue laying into her, then something occurred to him. "The librarian in the palace is ancient, you could-"

"No! I'm not being a librarian, posh boy, I have a punk rock image to maintain!"

"You're impossible," he said, "you know that?"

"Bit rich, coming from you!"

The two of them glared at each other for a while, waiting for the other to break the silence. Then-

"If there wasn't a table in the way, I would _so_ be having sex with you right now," said Gwen, still sounding quite angry. Whether it was at him or the table, Loki wasn't sure.

"Well," he replied, "just walk up to me, then."

"Or _you_ could walk up to _me_."

"Why should I?"

"Because you're in the wrong, arsehole!" She glowered at him, and then her face broke into a grin. "God, this is so stupid. We're so stupid, we can't even figure this out."

"We'll think of something, Gwen," he said, "and if we don't, it's only a fortnight. We've both survived worse."

She nodded. "I can't help noticing," she said, "that you appear to have walked around the table."

"As have you."

He kissed the smirk right off of her face.


	20. Chapter 20

_Since you're being so awkward, I caved and found this. Eight days until you can go back to your pathetic excuse for a planet._

"How romantic," she murmured, and unwrapped the paper from the block that had been left on the table. It was a book, a humungous book; its title was in old Slavic runes, but almost as soon as she focused on them they rearranged themselves into words she could understand; _A Compleat Hiftory of Afgard_.

She opened it to the first page, and laughed disbelievingly as she watched the gilded drawing of it move. She recognised it as Yggdrasil, with nine globes shifting slowly between its branches as stars pulsed between them. Her fingers drifted to the blue one, streaked with green and white- the silver light around it grew stronger at her touch, as if it recognised one of its own.

She chewed her lip and leafed through the first few pages, before skipping to the very last one as she always did. It was blank, save for a handwritten message in faded ink. Unfortunately for Gwen's nosy nature, it was written in Nordic runes.

"But fortunately," she said to herself, "I did those as part of my university course." She rifled through Heimdall's drawers until she found a quill, some ink and a scrap of parchment, then slowly began to decipher the writing. It took her about ten minutes, and she was so intensely focused that she didn't even realise what it said until she was finished, and could look at it as a whole.

 _For my son, Loki. May you learn from the mistakes of your grandfathers, and the wisdom of your grandmothers. All my love, always, Frigga._

Gwen realised she was crying, and hastily wiped her eyes on the off-chance someone might walk in. _I can't keep it,_ was her first thought, which was immediately chased away by another. _Of course you can. You have to, he_ gave _it to you. And stop crying, for hell's sake._

"What's got into me, Algernon?" she asked the mouse on her shoulder as she balled up the scrap parchment and threw it in the fire. "We need to sort me out, asap."

She slammed the book shut and walked out into the tiny courtyard that backed onto Heimdall's home. The cottages on either side had similar such courtyards, and luckily for Gwen they were all filled with laundry. She scrambled up onto the wall and crawled along it until she reached a line full of clothes, grabbed an armful before anyone noticed, and dropped back into Heimdall's yard.

"How the shit do these even work, Algernon?" She pulled off her own clothes and inspected the ones she had nicked. "So… trousers first, thank god they fit, then this shift thing, and then the tunic goes over the head and you lace it up at the back… no, the front… _ha_!"

She looked down at herself, and scrunched her nose up at the coarse fabrics she was now wearing. Shoes would be harder to obtain, so she would have to go barefoot and hope nobody noticed. Her hair was another problem, especially with two inches of roots showing- she ended up braiding it tightly along her head like a medieval milkmaid, which both hid most of the pink and made it look longer than it was.

"Why do the men have hair longer than me here, Algernon? It's impractical." She tucked the mouse into the pocket on the front of her tunic, took a deep breath and slipped out into the Asgardian market.

As impressive as the palace was, this was where she belonged- a densely packed street where everyone was busy, too busy to watch their stalls all their pockets all the time. Gwen was starving, so she drifted innocently past a fruit stall and took a plum the size of her fist as she did, without anyone noticing a thing.

The sun-baked cobbles were pleasantly warm on her bare feet as she walked, glancing up at the palace every so often. Its structure reminded her of a church organ with its gradually ascending golden pipes, and although it was certainly beautiful she definitely preferred the castles back home.

After an hour or so (and three more plums), the thing she had been waiting for sauntered down the street in a linked-arm group of three. A tall woman and two men, one large and the other slender, all dressed far more opulently than the people surrounding them. All with their weapons safely sheathed, and purses clinking with money at their belts.

 _I should really pay Heimdall some rent or something,_ she thought as she stood up and started to follow them. _Yeah, that sounds like a legit reason to do this, instead of "I was bored"._

"Volstagg," said the woman, "if I didn't know you better, I would say your eyes are bigger than your stomach. Surely we do not need to stop at every stall?"

"But what if I miss something?" Volstagg responded.

"Or some _one_ ," added the slim blond man, giving the girl at a fabric stand a dazzling smile.

"You are both despicable," the woman said with a small smile.

"I'll drink to that," the blond one said, and Volstagg guffawed. He approached a mead seller and his hand went to his purse- or rather, where it had been. "Ah… this could be a problem."

The woman raised an eyebrow at him. "Caught short, Fandral?"

"No! It must have been stolen from me!" Fandral retorted hastily, as a blush suffused his fine pallor.

Still chuckling, Volstagg stepped forward. "Then allow me, my friend… hang on. No, no, no, I refuse to believe this…" he patted his tunic anxiously, looking for the bulge of money that wasn't there. "Impossible! This has never happened before!"

"Perhaps you were both so distracted by food and women you forgot to mind yourselves," the women smirked, "crime such as this in Asgard is rare, my friends, but you should always be wary of it."

"Sif, you are too paranoid of people trying to drain your wealth," Fandral warned her, "now buy Volstagg and myself some drinks."

"If you insist," Sif said, swaggering forward to the seller. She stopped abruptly just in front of him, pursed her lips and hung her head. "For the love of Yggdrasil… I have been pickpocketed as well."

"This is outrageous!" Volstagg thundered, "some street scrod plundering Lady Sif and the Warriors Three? Well, two of them."

"Hogun must never hear of this," Fandral told the other two, "I may never live it down - Sif, what is the matter?"

"I believe I have located the culprit," said Sif, and nodded to Gwen.

The Midgardian looked up from the fat, funny coins she had been distracted by, saw her three marks approaching her, and swore. As they broke into a run she did too, dropping the heavy purses and weaving through the crowds. She was fast and nimble, but there were three of them and they knew the streets far better than her- she was just looking over her shoulder for the blond one when she ran into the stomach of Volstagg.

"Any chance you'll just accept an apology?" she asked hopefully, and groaned as she felt her hands being tied behind her. "I guess not, then."

%

The cells in Asgard were very nice and clean, if fairly boring. She had been put in one on her own since the rest were filled with monsters and murderers from other realms, and she had spent the last couple of hours lying on her back, staring up at the uniform white ceiling and becoming increasingly hungry.

She didn't notice the guard walk in, but she did notice the plate of food that was placed by her head - and the mouse that followed it.

"Algernon!" she exclaimed, scooping him up and checking to see he was okay before looking up at the guard who had brought him in. His face was unfamiliar, but his expression- a familiar mix of amusement, affection and disdain- was one she recognised immediately.

"I heard rumour of a pink-haired pickpocket by the name of Ratatosk being taken into the palace cells, and thought to myself, 'surely, this is just a coincidence that they bear the title of a rodent.' And then I remembered whom I was dealing with. What happened to staying inside and not doing anything?" Loki asked in a stranger's voice.

"I got bored. And I totally would've got away with it, if I hadn't been distracted by your weird currency. The coins' weight in gold is probably worth more than the worth they actually represent, if that makes sense."

"Somewhat. Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, they were much nicer to me than Earth cops. Thank you for the book, by the way."

"I never finished it, so it was no trouble to give it to you. Heimdall tells me the search for you in Midgard has been called off, so you can return to your home, if that is what you desire."

"Hell yeah, it is!" she said excitedly, then hesitated. "How am I supposed to get out of this cell?"

"Surely a woman of your cunning could figure it out," he replied with a smirk.

"I don't even know how the golden window hologram thingies work, let alone the door. You could always, you know, _let_ me out, Mr Guard."

"And why would I do that?" Loki asked, smirk growing to a full on, god-of-mischief grin.

"Because you love me?" she suggested. "Also, please?"

Loki considered this, then crooked a finger at her to stand up and approach him. She did, cautiously, and he slipped something small into the pocket of her godawful tunic.

"That knife is imbued with venom potent enough to knock out an Asgardian for ten minutes," he said, "and the stairs to the left avoid the main hallways. The back passages are like a maze, however, so you'll probably get lost and starve to death before I even notice you're gone."

"You're so nice," she said, "when does the next guard come?"

"Now," Loki said, and disappeared in a shimmer of green light as her cell door opened again.

"Were you just talking to somebody?" the guard asked, looking around. Fortunately, the plate of food had disappeared along with its deliverer.

"No," she said, "just myself. I've been a little starved of company, in here on my own." She walked forward and slipped her arms around the guard's neck.

"Listen, wench," he said, "I have no interest in…" he slumped forwards onto her as she jabbed the blade into the exposed skin on his neck.

"Well that's fast-acting," she murmured, and dragged the guard out of the open door by his feet. "Jeez, you're heavy. Do they have diets on Asgard?"

She left him slumped in the nearest alcove of the dark corridor, which she followed until a symmetrical set of staircases. She followed Loki's advice and took the left flight, which indeed led into a labyrinth of spider-webbed passages.

"Like a maze…" she muttered to herself, "well, that makes it easier." She placed her hand on the wall to the left of her and walked forward, following the corridors and not once removing her palm. It was an old trick she had only ever heard about, she didn't even expect it to work- but after half an hour of walking she found herself in bright sunlight, blinking rapidly.

She took a couple of seconds to get her bearings, then pulled a silk banner from the wall beside her and tied it around her distinctive hair, which gave her a little more of a disguise. She rolled her neck and cracked her knuckles, then ran at the nearest low wall and jumped up onto it, followed it to the side of a house, grabbed the overhanging slate and pulled herself up onto the roof. She jumped silently from building to building, keeping low as she did, and headed south until she dropped into Heimdall's courtyard and grabbed her bag, shoving the book into it and slinging the whole thing onto her back.

To get home, she would have to reach that Bifrost thing, which would involve traversing several hundred yards of completely exposed bridge. But as she approached it, sticking to the shadows, she saw that its underside was supported by a network of gold arches and struts that couldn't look any more like a kids' climbing frame if they tried.

She discarded the restrictive tunic, wiped her sweaty hands on her shift and tightened the straps on her rucksack. "Sorry Algernon," she said, "but you're gonna have to go in my bag if you don't want to fall to your death…" as she said that, she looked down at the death-inducing drop from the verge of the cliff the bridge connected to, a drop she was uncomfortably close to. "Oh, dear god. That's terrifying." She swallowed. "Don't look down, just… don't look down, and wait until you're out of here before you start screaming and throwing up." She tensed her muscles to stop them shaking, and began to climb one of the massive golden pillars.

"Holy _shit!_ "

Two hours, the worst two hours of her life, later she staggered into the Bifrost and up to Heimdall. "Please can I go home now?" she asked, with blue-tinged lips. She liked her home. At its tallest, the burrow was only two storeys high, like all sensible things should be.

"If you wish," Heimdall said, a very subtle smile tugging at his lips.

"Thanks for letting me live in your house, by the way," she said in a shaky voice, one hand on the gatekeeper's chest to steady her.

"At least it was useful for once."

She patted his chest with her other hand. "You're a cool guy. You'll probably want to zap me before I sick all over you."

 **A/N writing other Asgardians is super-duper fun, and I couldn't resist the temptation of Gwen naming herself after the squirrel that runs between the nine realms in Norse mythology. That name may or may not become useful to her again, but not for a few dozen chapters yet.**


	21. Chapter 21

"Remember the two months or so you actually slept in a bed?" Loki asked Gwen, who had been slumped forwards on her desk when he found her. Her escape from the Asgardian gaol had caused no small amount of panic about the security of the supposedly inescapable cells, which Loki had smoothed over with a tact that Odin had never had.

"I prefer it when I got company," she yawned, pulling away a sheet of paper that had been stuck to her cheek.

"How did James and the Rats react when you came back?"

"I got a bollocking from Bobby and James started crying," she said shortly, "I'd rather not talk about it, especially since I've got a shit ton of work to catch up on." She did seem exhausted; there were dark circles around her eyes that weren't from her makeup and her nails were bitten down to their beds.

"You look awful."

"Cheers," she muttered, and yawned again. Loki walked around the desk and sat on the edge of it beside her, and brushed her hair back from her face with a finger. "And you sat there so pretty, with your cheekbones and your eyes and all."

"Have you ever considered becoming a poet?" Loki asked, and she smiled weakly. "Is it making you regret leaving Asgard yet?"

"Not even slightly. I've missed the history channel more than anything," she told him, "not to mention a significantly reduced class system… How long can you stay?" she asked, standing up and positioning herself between his legs.

"Long enough to get you into bed." He kissed her, and suddenly found that his arms around her waist were suddenly supporting her entire (though still not significant) weight. "Gwen. Mouse, put your feet back on the ground."

"But I'm so tired," she mumbled into his neck. "About getting me into bed… can you carry me? And can we just, like, sleep?"

"It means I get to enjoy your company without having to listen to you babble," he replied, "so if you like."

"You think I'm _annoying_?" she asked, mock-reproachfully.

"I'm with you only for your body," he said, "try not to take it personally."

%

Gwen wasn't the only one who preferred to sleep with company. One day, Loki mused as he drifted off, he would have to get her into his chambers in the palace. It would probably involve dragging her in there kicking and screaming, but he had already proven himself capable of that.

He was awoken by her tracing the scars on his back, the only ones he had that refused to heal. The burns had not disappeared over the years since he had received them, but rather faded into marbled swirls across his pale skin that stayed whatever glamour he wore. Perhaps a healer might be able to do something about them, but Loki was determined nobody would ever see them, this sign of weakness that Thanos and the Chitauri had inflicted upon him.

Nobody except Gwen, of course, who had enough shameful scars of her own- she had long ago explained about the syringe needles that had made those dots on her, the drugs that could easily have killed her, that she was lucky she never became addicted.

"Do they hurt?" she asked quietly.

"Only ghost pain."

"They're kind of pretty," she said, "in a weird way. Not like mine."

He smiled. "You're probably the only person in the world who would ever think that."

"Honestly, I don't know when I started looking at you through rose-tinted spectacles," she smiled, "it's probably not very good for your ego."

"What ego? I always thought I was rather humble. And it's unbecoming when you laugh like that."

"You're adopted."

"That cannot be your response to everything, mouse."

"Why not? And they _are_ pretty scars," she said firmly, kissing the one between his shoulder blades. "They look like the seafoam in the Great Wave off Kanagawa. It's a painting, before you ask."

"I wasn't going to ask," he muttered.

"Liar."

"Well, I'm not called Silvertongue for nothing." He rolled onto his side so she could no longer reach his back.

"I think posh boy suits you way better," she replied, pulling at her lip piercing with her teeth.

"I always wondered," said Loki, "why do you change your name so often?"

She looked away at nothing over his shoulder. "I… just fell into the habit, I guess. I stopped going by my birth name after I ran away, and then it was easier to be something different to each person. Made it easier to play 'em, if I wanted to, and made _me_ myself harder to track down. Downside is I kinda lost track of who I was, after a while. I couldn't afford an identity if I wanted to survive. I still can't kick the habit- I'm boss to the Rats, miss to James, Mel to Ben and Gwen to you."

"What about mouse?"

"Stop trying to make mouse happen, it's not going to happen. Posh boy." She laughed at herself.

"I never asked- why Gwen?"

"It means clean, pure like. I guess my subconscious was telling me I needed a fresh start. Fat lot of good it did my innocence."

"Quite."

On the bedside table, her phone bleeped and she sat up. "I need to get this… hello? Oh, hi… No, I haven't… holy shit, seriously?... Sodding hell…" There was a long pause as she listened to the person on the other end of the line with a furrowed brow, and Loki kissed her neck lightly in an attempt to distract her. "Can you give me an address?" she leaned away from him to grab a pen and paper, and scribbled something down in messy handwriting. "Cheers, Ben… I know. I can handle it. It'll be sorted by the end of the week, don't worry." She hung up and tapped the phone against her lip piercing, which Loki had noticed she always did when she was thinking.

"What is it?" he asked her curiously.

She didn't answer him for a while, which was annoying. "People are trying to kill me," she said eventually, with far less gravitas than the statement deserved.

"That seems like an inconvenience."

She pulled on a shirt and walked to one side of her bedroom, which was entirely covered by a map of New York. "So the Rats escalated quicker than I expected, right? We put a lot of bounty hunters out of business. The closest thing we have to rivals are the hall street gang, who grew out of a hole the mafia left behind here." She tapped a point on the map with her finger. "I guess they don't like a woman taking their job from them, 'cause according to Ben they're gonna have put out a hit on me by the end of the week. There's a baker's dozen of 'em, and since we started thriving and they ran outta business they've all been hanging around the base…"

Loki could see the gears turning in her head, and knew her well enough to guess what they would produce.

She looked over her shoulder at him. "Would you be interested in joining me on a pre-emptive strike, posh boy?"

"I thought you'd never ask," he smirked.

"Right," she said, "well, then. Back in a tick." And she bolted in a way that only street urchins with a sense for trouble can.

Loki stared absently at the space she had just vacated. He knew for a fact that she still carried a photo of Lucy in her pocket. But some things, he knew, one had to carry, however painful they are. That was what one did when it came to family. He had died in Svartalfheim to save Thor, after all. Sort of.

Still. All that... turbulence was behind them now. They could move onto gradual world domination and the occasional smattering of murder like the pair of megalomaniacs that they were.

 **A/N honestly though I love writing Loki and Gwen so much, their dynamic's so different to all my other fics. I also enjoy making their lives incredibly difficult, as you may see in future chapters :)**


	22. Chapter 22

Loki wasn't only the best candidate for the partner in crime, thought Gwen, he was the only one. She didn't want the other Rats to know lest they panic about the threat and scatter, and who else was there- James? The thought made her laugh out loud.

She checked herself out critically in the mirror, admiring the outfit she had been waiting for an excuse to wear since she had got it. She pulled the hood up and smiled as it threw her head into almost complete shadow, bent down and began to secure the complicated little harness around her waist which held two of Loki's knives on her back, parallel to her hip bones and easily reached yet hidden by the tails of her black coat. She preferred guns really, since they were quick and easy, but she was in a vindictive mood and wanted to _feel_ the kills. It was the same reason her bronze knuckles sat in her pocket, waiting patiently to taste blood.

Her physical appearance had changed a lot over the last year; the roots of her hair had been dyed away, her piercings were more intricate and, perhaps the most noticeable, her new life meant that she now had some meat on her bones. Not much, only the amount appropriate for a mouse, but still. _Damn,_ she thought, _now he's got me calling myself that._

Arms wrapped around her waist and her hands reflexively went for the knives, and Loki leapt back as she went to drag one over his throat. "Oh," she said, "it's you. Think of the devil."

"Hmm." He cast an appreciative eye over her. "You look rather intimidating."

"That's what I was going for," she said proudly, "you don't scrub up so bad yourself."

He rested his hand on the back of her neck and kissed her in a way that would've made lesser women weak at the knees. Gwen, however, had shit to do, and no silvertongue, silver-lipped bastard was going to change that. "Come on," she said, "James is looking after Algernon for me, in case you were worried."

"I wasn't."

She led him up onto the roof of the squat building, framed by taller walls on either side. She jumped the small gap onto her ledge, holding her breath as she tried not to look down, then climbed down the building's drainpipe into a twittern, one of the alleys that was barely even that and more a tiny fissure between two buildings. Cities like this were full of them, and if you knew them like she did then not even the Rats would be able to follow you. Fortunately, nobody knew them like she did.

Loki dropped noiselessly beside her a moment later. "You have weapons, right?" she whispered to him as they found a route via shadows to the abode of the hall street gang.

"Only my razor-sharp wit," he replied under his breath. "of course I have bloody weapons. Remind me of the plan."

"Climb in through the window and stab anything that moves."

"Gwen, darling," he said, "that isn't a plan."

"We're not all blessed with your foresight, posh boy," she muttered, "besides, if I plan then things can go wrong."

"Infallible logic," he hissed, "really, I'm surprised nobody's thought of that before."

"You're such a dick."

"Well, my beauty and intellect come at a price," he replied, and she snorted. "Whereas I have yet to see any redeeming qualities in you, mouse."

"Uh, but you love me?"

"For reasons beyond my comprehension."

"I will stab you," she warned him, and heard him laugh.

"That was one of the first things you ever said to me, you know."

"It's good to be consistent," she said, fingers twitching nervously at her sides. "Loki, I… we can't mess this up."

"I had rather assumed that.

"No, you don't understand. Since last time you were here, they – they tailed one of my Rats. They tailed her until she was down an alley and the beat seven shades of crap out of her and then they… they did other things, too. Worse things." She stopped talking, since her voice was beginning to shake.

"Ah," said Loki. " _Now_ I understand."

"She had to go to hospital."

"One would imagine so."

"And I... I don't like stuff like that. You know I don't."

"I do indeed."

"And it was my fault! I let that happen to her and it was my fault!"

"No," he said firmly, "it wasn't. Stiff upper lip, mouse."

She took a deep breath, and tried not to think about beds. She had been sleeping on the couch ever since her Rat had been attacked. "Okay. I'm good. Let's go."

Hall Street Squat was an ugly Edwardian building with boarded windows and graffitied walls, that had a delightful, stereotypically male smell of booze, piss and sweat. She looped round the block to the back entrance, which was somehow even less pleasant, and pointed out an empty windowframe to Loki. He nodded, and dropped his human glamour he had been wearing on the way there.

They walked forward silently, every step measured, and she climbed into the building first with a wrinkled nose beneath the scarf that covered her lower face. She followed the sound of voices, and the two were so silent it would have been possible to hear a syringe needle drop.

"… The bitch hasn't got a clue," a man was saying, "she's dumb enough to think her upstart brothel's safe from us, like we don't do this for a living anyway. Who the fuck does she think she is, trying to nick her trade?" A baritone chorus of assent followed his word, and the clinking of beer bottles. "We'll make her regret ever thinking she could make it in this town, eh lads?" they cheered.

They were greasy, middle-aged men in wife-beaters and unclean suits, who smoked cigars and blew the smoke in people's faces and thought it was funny to do so. They had contacts with the Mafia, but Gwen had better ones, and the Rats were better than them at what they did, too. But they were not the sort of men to go down without a fight.

There were ten of them, sat in the filthy lounge with the telly showing a football game that served as nothing more than white noise as they tried to excuse the fact that they had been run into the ground by a woman. They were so self-absorbed that they didn't notice the two moving shadows until the smaller one darted forward and stabbed her knife into the leader's neck.

Chaos ensued. The men were unprepared for an attack in their own domain, and were practically flying off the walls. One threw a punch at Loki, who swerved away from it without effort and, almost lazily, stuck a blade in his yellowed eye. The prince of Asgard had trained for a thousand years, and killing half the gang in a matter of minutes was about the same trouble as swatting a fly. A lethargic, obese fly. Gwen, meanwhile…

Everyone has a little bit of animal rage inside of them; humanity comes from ignoring it. But sometimes the savage nature breaks through, and that is the time when people kill with their bare hands and cannot even stop themselves from doing it. These bastards had tried to _kill_ her. They had gone after her god damn _Rats._ And for that, she would make them hurt.

When the last man was dead, she wiped her blades on his shirt and resheathed them, wiping the blood from her face with her sleeve. "That was satisfying," she said to Loki, who had been watching her finish off the last couple with an incredibly devilish expression.

"Now what?"

"Now we wait for the other three to turn up," she said with relish, shoving a body off a table and sitting on it.

"I think you enjoyed that a little too much," Loki said, sauntering over to her.

"Says you," she replied, but didn't deny it. "We're not the good guys, Loki."

"Oh," he said, "I am well aware. How long until the other three come back?"

"Ben says they're never gone longer than an hour. We leave one alive-"

"To let the story get around," he nodded.

"They won't go to the police, they're too deep into the shit themselves. I was well impressed by the spinny thing you did, by the way."

"I'll have to teach you sometime," he said. His pupils were dilated with the adrenaline rush, she was pleased to note, and fixed on her. "Dead men's blood sets off your complexion wonderfully."

"Are you _flirting_ with me?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "In a room full of people we just killed?"

"Well, we need to do something to pass the time until the other three return."

"I have a couple of ideas," she replied, and his grin returned.

She was lucky that Loki had given her enough good memories to drown out the ones that had made her scared of beds.

 **A/N so I realised that the ratio of chapters I have written to how long we have left until Ragnarok is significantly closer than I at first thought, so I reckon I can afford to update an extra chapter as well as fortnightly Fridays every now and then. Also, I just rewrote a couple of later chapters that aren't due out for a few weeks and I am SO EXCITED for when we get to that point. But we've got a while to go before then :)**


	23. Chapter 23

There were little, flat-faced creatures with tawny fur and lilac eyes that could climb anything in Asgard, up to and including the towers of the palace. They were called smarrakkis, and one had climbed through the window into Loki's chambers and was now perched on the dresser with its tail curled around the corner. They were technically pests, little better than rats and nowhere near as useful as cats, and Loki knew the kitchen would leave out vermin traps for them, which made the fact that this one had managed it all the way up here even more impressive. Instead of throwing the smarrakki out of the window he called out to it, and as he approached it headbutted his hand in a plea for attention. "Stupid animal," he said softly, as he scratched it behind the ears. "Who told you I was a good person to seek affection from?"

It purred happily.

"Gwen's turned me into something horribly close to sentimental," he murmured, "she's no good, you know. I don't know why I keep her around."

Well, he did to some extent. She was clever, and her company tended to lead to periods of danger and excitement. She made him laugh, although she often didn't mean to, and since the year of living indoors she had gained enough wait to turn all her sharp edges into soft, slender curves that fitted perfectly into his hand. She still wasn't pretty, but when she talked she gave the illusion of being beautiful. But that still didn't account for why she made him feel weak and strong all at once and always had an afterthought for her, even when she wasn't there.

"She's still greater than the sum of her parts," he told the pest, and then it came to him. She had chosen _him_ above anyone else as well.

It sounded selfish, that he loved her for loving him. But Loki's entire life had involved him being second best; making way for Thor, his brother being the only reason Sif and the warriors three put up with him, even as a child. Nobody really wanted to play with the weird kid who always came up with the nastiest plans, who avoided their matron and governess to go and build traps in the forest and steal things he had no need for, even if he was a prince. It was why everything had gone to shit- he had killed Laufey to prove himself to his parents, and even then they had shunned him. Even _now_ , he was forced to live a lie for people to respect him, love him as their king despite the fact he had done a better job than Odin ever did. It was why he had fallen and become the wretched creature he was in the first place; the company he kept had convinced him he was a monster, so he had to live up to their expectations.

And then there was Gwen, who knew of the appalling things he had done and loved him nonetheless, just as he did her with all her flaws. But that someone could see him for what he really was- not just the blue-skinned Jotun, something he could not help, but the spoiled prince that had fallen from grace- and not be disgusted by that was a miracle to him. Even then, she could have been infuriatingly kind, sweet and nice and patient and _pitiful_ , but she wasn't. She was fun, instead. Fun and bad and ever so clever, just like him.

"It's rather vain. I love her because she loves me, and the love is born because we're so similar. And yet she's still so different to me on the surface… still, nobody's perfect."

%

"Gwen?"

He was appeared in her bedroom to the sounds of retching coming from the attached bathroom. She staggered out a minute later, face slightly green and very wan. "Ugh."

"Please don't come near me," he said quickly, stepping away from her. She very slowly eased herself onto the bed and sprawled out on her back. "What's the matter?"

"No idea, but it'll pass in a minute. I probably caught something. Nothing like class A drugs to weaken your immune system. That, coupled with the fact I'm hungover as hell, should explain it." She sat up and rubbed her eyes, then slapped her cheeks to bring some colour back into them. "Bleeuurgh."

"Indeed." He sat down a safe distance from her.

"Any new wars or shit like that in Avalon?"

"Don't call it that," he said for the thousandth time, "and no, it's disappointingly quiet. The high point of the week was a smarrakki getting into my chamber."

"Come again?" she asked, yawning as the light of dawn crept lazily in through the window.

"Nothing more than vermin, really. It's entirely a testament to how much you've weakened me that I allowed it to live."

To his surprise, she burst into tears.

"What's wrong with you?" he asked, as she sobbed into her hands.

She didn't reply for a couple of minutes, then wiped her face with her sleeve and looked up at him with bloodshot eyes. "My fragile female constitution," she mumbled, and he rolled his eyes. "Sodding hell."

"Be that as it may, it is still certainly not enough to merit weeping over," he said archly, and she sniffed. "You haven't been poisoned by any chance, have you?" she shook her head. "Hypnotised? Been replaced by a doppelganger who doesn't know you particularly well?" Against his better judgement, he pressed a hand against her forehead. "What temperature are humans supposed to be?"

"I'm still me," she assured him, "I don't know…" her face slackened. "Oh, shit."

"What?"

"Shit."

" _Gwen!_ "

"It's nothing," she said hastily, standing up. "You picked a bad time to come, I'm busy all day. See you later."

"Don't kiss me! You've just thrown up."

"Thanks for reminding me," she said shortly, "now bugger off." She left the room, leaving Loki to wonder what in the Hel was going on.

 **A/N not so much filler as needing to bridge the gap between two Gwen chapters. Also, it's been a long time since I wrote this chapter, but I** ** _think_** **that the name for the little animal is a bastardised translation of "little fox" into Old Norse, in case you were interested. Let nobody say I am not thorough. Just this morning, while writing Finding Bucky, I have googled "Russian swear words", "how many bullets can a sniper rifle hold", "ancient greek for door" and "ghost in the machine" (which I should really have been able to write about from memory considering it's part of my college philosophy course). That was one hell of a chapter.**


	24. Chapter 24

_You know what this is._

Gwen shoved the thought, the evil, life-ruining little thought, to the back of her mind for the rest of the day. She had meetings with clients and conferences with the city's crime bosses, then she returned to the burrow to do the week's filing, which was all on paper. Gwen had been on the streets when the digital revolution happened, and her inexperience with it, combined with the Ultron palaver, meant she trusted technology so little it took months for James even to convince her to get a phone (her laptop was barely used and its memory constantly wiped).

When she was done- which was well into the night- she went downstairs and found James in the kitchen along with a couple other Rats, who were microwaving things that should not be microwaved.

"I buy you lot a telly and you do this of an evening instead," she sighed, as whatever was in the machine exploded.

"Hey, miss."

"Have you seen Bobby?" she asked, walking to the cupboard and pulling out a box of cereal.

"In her room, miss."

"Mmmfks."

"Pardon?"

She swallowed the Cheerios with some difficulty. "Thanks."

Bobby's room was at the end of the corridor; still stuffing her face with cereal, Gwen approached it and slammed her palm a few times on the door instead of entering, having learned from experiences she would much rather forget. The Rats all had "do not disturb" signs, now. It was for the best.

"WHAT?"

"I NEED TO TALK TO YOU!"

"TALK TO JAMES!" Bobby screamed back.

"IT INVOLVES MY REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS!"

She heard her groan, then a minute later she opened the door. "Have you hit the menopause?" she asked grumpily.

"I'm the same age as you, arsehole."

"Hmph." She came out into the corridor, and they both sat down on the slightly dusty floorboards. "Well, what is it?"

"I…" Now that she had to, it seemed impossible to say. She couldn't get her mouth to wrap around the words; she looked down and saw her hands were trembling a little in a rare show of nervousness. _Pull yourself together_ , she told herself.

"Are you pregnant?"

"Why would you say that? Of course I'm not! Whatever gave you… I don't know," she admitted, and buried her face in her hands. "Oh, bloody hell."

Bobby's expression softened a little. "Why don't you know?"

"I… I keep throwing up and crying a lot," she said, "and it feels… it feels like last time." She wouldn't admit it aloud, but deep in her bones she knew it was true. It had been the same with Lucy. "But I haven't checked."

"Didn't know there was a last time," said Bobby speculatively.

"Yeah, well, it didn't end brilliantly." She lifted her shirt to show the other woman her C-section scar, and Bobby winced.

"Shit," she breathed.

"That's what I said."

"Is it... _his_?"

"Couldn't be anyone else's," she mumbled. "What do I do, Bob?"

"Tell him," she ordered her, "next chance you get. D'you want to keep it?"

She thought of how much Lucy meant to her- and then remembered the trouble that had arisen because of the daughter she already had. She thought of how she was busy enough as it was, of how Loki had precisely zero interest in children, of how the child would be half-human, half-Jotunn and how it would be brought up with criminal parents who were effectively dead to the world. "No," she said in a small voice, and Bobby's tattooed arm wrapped around her.

"Hey. Just tell him you wanna stop it and you can both get on with your lives. And use protection next time."

She laughed weakly. "Sorry for dragging you into this."

"Just don't do it again, deal?"

%

She dropped the test in the bin, washed her hands and stared at her midriff in the mirror. It looked flat and normal, save for the scars, not a single sign of the time bomb that was hiding beneath it, a bomb she urgently needed to defuse before it went off and ruined everything. "You've existed less than two months and already you're fucking it all up," she said to her stomach, "at least you're honouring a fine tradition from both sides of the family."

"Gwen!" she heard Loki call from a couple of rooms away, and dropped her shirt.

"Coming," she yelled back, "I need to talk to you, anyway." She hurried out of the bathroom, through her bedroom into the office, and took her seat as she found herself unable to look him in the eye. "Hey," she said, shuffling some papers.

"Well?"

"You might want to sit down," Gwen told Loki as she paced up and down behind the desk. "Please."

"Why do I have a bad feeling about this?" he asked, lounging back in his chair like the spoiled prince he was.

She gripped the back of her chair and chewed her lip, the coolness of her piercing a reassuring familiarity. "In advance," she said, "I'm not exactly over the moon about it either."

"Mouse, sweetheart," he said, not bothering to look at her either as he retrieved the knives she had nicked off him from her pen pot. "I'm not a lover of suspense." He stuck the knives in the recesses of his leather tunic and put his feet up on the desk, leaning onto its back two legs. "At least, not when I'm the one creating it."

She looked down at her hands, which were twisting around each other in her lap. "Sorry."

Loki sighed heavily. "In that case," he said, "I really must return to where I am needed." He stood up and started to walk away, and Gwen realized that she had to speak now or she would never be able to do it.

"I'm pregnant!" she blurted out. Loki froze, one hand resting on the door but not yet pushing it open. "I didn't – I only just realised. I'm about seven weeks along, I think. I didn't even realise I still could, not after Lucy… Loki. Say something. Please."

Silence.

"Okay, well…" she stood up, clenching her fists and pressing them down onto the table. "I'm not keeping it. I mean… shit, what the hell would happen if I did? But I'm not. I have to get it out of me, I _have_ to."

"You can't," Loki said, still with his back to her.

"What?"

"I said, you cannot kill whatever it is growing inside you. Would that you could, but… it has Jotunn blood. There is nothing in neither Asgard nor Jotunheim that could do it, so I doubt that human healers could."

"No," said Gwen, "I have to, you're… you're lying…"

Loki spun around and stormed towards her. "Look at me!" he yelled. "I am an abomination, Gwen! I cannot have a child! Half human, half-Jotunn; you think I _want_ to bring something like _that_ into this world?! It will be a monster!"

"You think _you're_ the only one that's scared of what's gonna happen? I'm the one with the damn thing stuck in my gut, Loki! Lucy almost killed me already, and now I have this, this _mutt_ inside of me and I can't do it again! I can't! It is the child of this alien, this god, and it is stronger than me!"

"We don't know that," he said, no longer shouting.

"Yeah, we do. You know we do."

Loki turned away, running a hand over his face. Once again he said nothing, and Gwen wished that she had found out the way to shut him up in better circumstances.

"It's a girl," she said, for the sake of having something to say, "I know it is. I knew with Lucy and I know now. Maybe we can call it Frigga."

"Don't," he said, "not now. Don't do that."

"I'm being bloody practical, Loki! Since it's obviously gonna have to live, it'll need a name! Jesus. I haven't even got a social security number. The mongrel child of two killers. What have we done?"

Loki shook his head, jaw clenched.

She walked away from the desk and towards her tiny window, struggling with the catch and yanking it upwards. The cold, dry city air flooded in, carrying the noises of civilisation with it like an unwanted guest. "This has got to be fate," she murmured, "right? Fucking… divine retribution, or some shit like that. I mean, it's not like we haven't done anything to deserve it." She felt nauseous, and dizzy, and she was pretty sure it was nothing to do with morning sickness. "Loki, I'm so sorry."

He walked so softly she didn't notice him moving until he was stood next to her, leaning on the wall by the window. "Do not be ridiculous," he said shortly. "This is as much my fault as it is yours. That is how it works, you know."

Gwen laughed weakly. "What're we gonna do?"

The answer he gave her… Gwen had faced, and would continue to face, many great and terrible things in her life. But nothing would ever scare her like his reply had done.

"I don't know," he said. "Oh, little mouse. I really do not know."

 **A/N because happy endings are not a thing that I do with great regularity.**


	25. Chapter 25

Fortunately- or perhaps not- Fate intervened a week after she discovered that they could not.

He appeared in her office at his usual time, but she wasn't there. "Gwen?" he called out, to no avail. It wasn't late, so he went downstairs to look for her first.

"Have you seen Mouse?" he asked James and the second-in-command, who were the only two in the kitchen.

"Thought she was in her office," the latter said. "Why?"

"She's not," he told them shortly, a molecule of worry appearing in his chest. It was an unfamiliar and unpleasant sensation which only seemed to occur nowadays because of the pink-haired girl.

"D'you want me to help you look for her, sir?"

"No," he said, and ran back upstairs and through to her bedroom. It wasn't until he saw Algernon untended on the bedside table that he truly began to panic.

"Where is she?" he asked the mouse, which continued to live its blissfully ignorant rodent life and completely ignored him.

He turned away from the animal and approached the door silently, seeing it was slightly ajar. "Gwen?" he said again, much softer this time, and although there was no response he could just hear weak, shallow breathing. He splayed a hand against the door, pushed it open, and stepped back again almost immediately.

The floor of the bathroom was covered in a dark pool of blood which appeared to be creeping up Gwen's bare legs in an attempt to claim her, staining the hem of the shirt she was wearing. The girl herself was unconscious, draped over the edge of the bath so her hands dangled limply inside it, with a bruise forming on her chin where she must have fallen and cracked it.

This time, it was Loki who thought he was going to be sick; every nerve in his body told him to flee from the scene, but it was the ghost of his mother's voice in his head telling him not to be such a coward that forced him to act in the opposite direction. He edged around the blood and scooped up her terrifyingly light body, feeling the still-warm blood seep through his sleeves as he kicked open the door and ran down the stairs to the basement kitchen.

 _Don't you dare leave me now, mouse_ , he thought, channelling the fear into rage. Rage was useful, he could achieve things with anger, but the fear only paralysed him.

A knee to the kitchen door and it swung open; James and the deputy, Bobby, jumped up out of their chairs. _What am I supposed to tell them? How am I to make mortals understand a tragedy so colossal as this?_ He knew, of course, but it took every modicum of energy the anger gave him to force himself to enunciate the word.

"Help," he said simply.

%

Loki found himself in another bathroom, naked from the waist up and scrubbing desperately at the blood on his skin; _her_ blood, the blood of a child that could kill easily its mother now, too. It had been so much of it. James had taken her away from him almost immediately, holding her far more gently than he ever could (the penalty of admitting she was equal to him was _assuming_ she was equal to him- she wasn't, she was weak and he could, _had_ broken her so easily) as Bobby went and found one of the Rats, who he vaguely recalled her saying to be some kind of Midgardian healer. He didn't know where they had taken her; nobody had thought to tell him. For once, Loki truly felt like the least important, least knowledgeable and least useful person in the room.

The blood was gone, his skin rubbed raw now. He shivered, wrapping his arms around himself - but he, a Frost Giant, would rather burn in Hel than put that red-soaked shirt back on. He pressed his back against the cool tiles on the wall and swore under his breath at himself. He had been selfish- the true reason he knew his kind had to stay away from Midgardians, the reason he had warned his brother away from Jane hours before his "death", was not because they were undeserved of them. It wasn't bigotry that made him disdainful of the species' weakness. No, it was the pain that their weaknesses created, for everyone involved. But he had been selfish, indulged himself, and almost killed her because of it. Maybe he actually _had_.

He couldn't stay in the room any longer- he wrenched the door open, then stopped dead as he saw something at his feet on the other side. It was a soft fabric jacket, neatly folded with the clean crisp lines only a valet could achieve.

"James," he murmured, picking it up and shrugging it on. Zipping it up to his neck he walked silently back up the corridor and ascended the stairs, headed towards her office. Sure enough, James was there, and leapt to his feet as he entered.

"Get out," Loki said quietly, and the boy hurried from the room. Seeing that he made an effect made him feel powerful, less useless- rage flared up again and he flung a heavy armchair left at her desk into the wall, where it shattered into dozens of wooden shards. He went to break something else, but then an old memory surfaced- one of Thor's countless tantrums from when they were younger, this one because he had not been crowned king, which had caused the prince to upend the entire banquet table. Remembering the disdain he had felt for his brother then, of his own perfect calmness, made Loki falter long enough to realise that destroying her office was not going to help matters.

 _Don't be a child_ , he thought, and sat on the floor in a corner. Hours passed, hours he spent biting down on his thumb and glaring at the wall opposite him, until finally Bobby emerged from the door beyond. A door he had been too scared to go beyond.

"Well?" he asked her without looking up.

"She lost it."

Loki closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and struggled to keep his emotions internal. "Mouse?"

"She'll be okay," she told him reluctantly, "but she's pretty shaken up. Give her a couple hours rest before you barge in, and try not to be a dick for once, yeah?"

"You're hardly a kindly soul yourself," he retorted, but she ignored him as she left the room. Loki realised he could not face going in there with the nurse still inside, so assumed a glamour of the fiery-haired woman who had just left before walking in.

Gwen was curled up on one side of the bed with Algernon in an identical position on the pillow next to her, both their eyes closed.

"Did you tell him?" the nurse asked whom she thought to be Bobby, and he nodded.

"The bastard left," he said in her voice, "get some rest, you look shattered."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah." She left the two of them alone, but Loki didn't drop the glamour just yet; he didn't want her to see him on the off chance she was awake, since he had run away from her after all.

One eye snapped open and stared at him through strands of pink. "Good morning, Vietnam," Gwen mumbled. "I know it's you, Loki."

He reverted back to his usual form, and Gwen dragged herself into a sitting position with a grimace. "I won't cry if you don't," she said. Her lips were blue.

"Deal."

Her mouth twitched. "You can come near me, you know. It's not contagious."

Her words removed the invisible barrier between them and he sat beside her, her narrow arm pressed against his much stronger one. She was clammy, like she had been out in the snow all day, but at least she was clean now. "Nice hoodie."

"I didn't choose it."

"Guessed that." She closed her eyes again, and he thought she might have fallen asleep had she not said, "I'm masking my pain with humour."

"That makes two of us." He linked his fingers with hers in an effort to bring some warmth into them, picking at a scab on her knuckle with his thumbnail. "Frigga would have been a good name."

"Told you so," she mumbled. "You okay?"

He looked away from her. "I'm fine," he lied, and did not for one second think that would fool her.

"Sure you are," she said, and kissed his shoulder. "Can you stay a while, please? Just until I fall asleep."

"You really think I'm so despicable as to leave you?" he asked, dropping her hand so he could slip his own around her narrow waist.

"I dunno," she whispered, "we're both pretty despicable people." She slumped against him and little by little began to relax, with her legs hooking around his and her eyes half-closed. As minutes past her breathing slowed but become no less shaky, with irregular pauses here and there, which led to him realising she was trying to match the rise and fall of his own chest.

"Mouse," he said in a low voice, "sleep."

"Can't," she mumbled, "feel too shit."

He didn't have the heart to quip back, instead pushing her hair back from her sweaty forehead and stroking her cheek gently until her eyes completely closed and her breathing found its own steady tempo. When he was sure she was too far into sleep to hear him, Loki began to sing the lullaby Frigga had for him and Thor when they were barely able to walk, hoping it would comfort himself as much as it would her.

 _"When your stars are fading, child,_

 _I'll light the sky with candles,_

 _I'll steal fire from the old king's hearth_

 _To bring you light of day."_

It reminded Loki of cold nights and heavy blankets, of the cold stone floors of the palace being left behind for the rugs and the warmth of the king's private rooms. Back then his nightmares had been the nonsensical things of a child's monster-under-the-bed fears. Now, he _was_ the nightmare.

 _"When your walls are breaking, child,_

 _I'll shelter you in my arms,_

 _I'll snatch cloth from the old queen's stead_

 _To keep you warm and gay."_

His mother had always been there on the nights he woke up scared of the bad dreams, with a soft embrace and a softer voice that would make the tears dry almost immediately. She had known, even then, that he was Jotunn. And she had not told him - not because, like Odin, she thought he was more useful to her ignorant, but because she loved him.

 _"When your hands are shaking, child,_

 _I'll hold your troubles for you,_

 _I'll take swords from the prince's side_

 _To fight the dark away."_

And then there had been this, the lullaby, which would have inevitably woken Thor up too, and they would both sit at the hem of their mother's robes and listen with glossy eyes as she sung to them, chasing away the shadows and the nightmares, and back then it had all been so simple, and he had been Aesir, and barely even known Midgard existed, and he could have been king with his own face and his own voice instead of living the life of a man he hated.

 _"When your love is fading, child,_

 _I will love for you instead,_

 _I'll steal th'princess's heart for you_

 _To send sweet words your way."_

And if that had happened, he would never have ended up here, in this small Earth bedroom, singing the same lullaby to someone else he hated to love unconditionally. He would not have broken her like this.

 _And when the frost is coming, child,_

 _I'll put my body 'fore yours_

 _I'll fight the Jotunn curse for you_

 _My darling, please just stay._

 _"My darling, please just stay."_

Life would be so much easier if he could just succumb to the blue-skinned monster inside of him; as it was, he was having to pretend to be a good person on Asgard, and his conscience was forcing him to be so with the one person he thought he could be despicable around too. He played idly with Gwen's hair as he watched Algernon run around at the foot of the bed.

"If I did not love you," he said to the slumbering woman, "we would both be so much the better. I hope that you are aware of that."

%

Over the next few days it became apparent that something had shifted in both their relationship and himself; he felt older, and more intrinsically linked to Gwen. He could never turn his back on the girl, as much as it pained him. She had become his one, involuntary weakness.

"Really?" she said to him with a raised eyebrow when he happened to voice his thoughts aloud, "your _one_ weakness? That apart from me, you're perfect?"

"Well," he said, "yes." He had expected a laugh, but all he got was a half-hearted smile.

That was a change in Gwen he didn't like. At first he had just thought the experience matured her somewhat, after a couple of weeks he noticed she was much quieter than usual, and often brushed him off with the excuse of work. He worried about her almost as much as he was annoyed at being rebuffed, by a Midgardian no less, so (in a very bad mood) he dragged her out to the first museum he could find in New York.

"I don't get it," she said, "why are you being nice to me?"

"You know why," Loki said, looking at the paintings hung on the wall instead of her. _Asgardian infants can paint better than this._

"It's not – it's not going to fix everything. You know that, right? And you being nice is out of character."

"Me?" he asked, turning to face her. " _I'm_ being out of character? You're the one who –" he caught himself mid-sentence, and had a rare twinge of guilt. "I did not…"

"Think?" Gwen asked coolly, folding her arms. "Yeah. I gathered that." She sighed, and dropped down onto a bench. "I used to kip in places like this, y'know. Back when I was a little runaway."

He took a seat next to her. "That must have been enjoyable."

"When you're so jacked up on drugs you don't really care that much, but… it was simpler, I guess. I liked that I could just start again, whenever I wanted. Anonymity's so easy, here. Change your name, change your hair, move district and you're a whole new person."

"Who was Marylou going to be?" he asked. "She was the first name you gave me. Before Gwen."

"Someone who was gonna try and fix you. Gwen figured that would probably be harder than if I was gonna do it to the average human," she said. "Gwen liked you, anyway. Marylou didn't."

"I was not particularly affable with Marylou, either."

That made Gwen laugh. It wasn't her usual snide snigger, but it was something. "I want to run away again," she said, "not… permanently. Just for a night or two. But I can't do that anymore, people'll recognize me. And don't even think about suggesting Asgard, posh boy. I've had enough of that place."

She had lost a lot of weight, recently, and the narrowness of her face made her look more like the little street rat that had tried to pickpocket him than she had done in over a year. She seemed weary, and old, and he needed to do something that would jolt her back into life. Already, he could feel an idea forming. "What about neutral territory?" he asked. "Hypothetically, of course. Assuming my shade of the Allfather could manage to keep an eye on my kingdom for an evening."

"Well," she said, looking at him out of the corner of her eye. "Hypothetically, it sounds great. I'm sure I could get Bobby to hypothetically babysit for me. Where is this place, then? Hypothetically?" She said the word like a commoner, pronouncing "th" like "f" and dropping the second T altogether. "Hyperfe-iklee." He shouldn't have liked it as much as he did.

"The hole to which all dregs of the universe fall," he told her, "it would involve some interstellar travel, I'm afraid."

"Oh," said Gwen, " _goodee._ Tell me about it."

"The galaxy's biggest black market, complete with its own museum." He saw her eyes light up. "I sent one of the Relics to be kept there."

"What's it called?"

"Knowhere."


	26. Chapter 26

"So it's a head?" Gwen asked, drinking in her surroundings and trying to forget their quite frankly terrifying journey there. "Like, a really massive head?"

"Or what's left of it," Loki replied. He was wearing a glamour that everyone could see but her, and had a hood pulled up over his head as well. She herself was wearing her long leather coat and boots that would be good for kicking, although the diversity of the crowd meant that she did not need to worry about sticking out like a sore thumb in her earthly clothes. Here, looking weird seemed to help you blend in. A bright green man with six eyes walked past her, and she lifted the watch from his wrist as he did. "I saw that."

"Old habits," she said vaguely, examining the watch. "Halfway across the galaxy, and they still measure time in units of twelve. Sucks that they don't speak English, either."

"I'm sure you shall get your point across somehow."

Knowhere seemed to be in a perpetual state of night, lit by luminous artificial streetlamps and far-off galaxies that she could see through the gaping holes of what could either be referred to as the ceiling or the cranium, and the buildings were mostly small and ramshackle, built out of salvaged materials of which she only recognised some. The ground was littered with large pools filled with suspicious yellow liquid, many of which had illegal-looking wells set up around them. The streets were lined with vendor stalls selling things that she didn't even _want_ to imagine, and the air smelled, as it always did in places like these regardless of space and time, of greasy takeaway food. Above her head, spindly towers turned to parabolic bridges and bridges turned to hanging platforms as they followed the shell of the head, as though gravity was nothing more than a matter of perspective.

"Just to double check," she said, "Ratatosk –" she pointed at herself "- and Lejemand." She poked Loki in the chest.

"Ratatosk and Lejemand," he repeated, nodding. She _knew_ he liked that name. It was an old Norse epithet for him, its origin from the earthly legends rather than Asgard itself, meaning nobody would recognise it; _the playing man._ It suited him well. Far better than Odinson or Laufeyson, at any rate.

"Where's this museum, then?"

Loki would never do anything as obvious as _point_ ; instead, she followed his gaze to the massive yet somehow squat building that overlooked its surroundings, covered with higgledy-piggledy extensions and with a glowing glass ceiling. "Don't trust Tivan."

"Who?"

"The Collector. You'll know when you see him."

Gwen shivered. "When you say 'Collector'," she said, "you don't mean stamps, do you?"

"No."

"Thought not."

"There's a bar outside. I'll meet you there in an hour," Loki said, "I am going to win no small amount of money off of people too drunk to know better than to challenge me."

"Have fun," said Gwen.

"Oh, I shall." She watched him as he disappeared through the crowd, not a worry about her as he presumably thought she could look after herself.

 _He feels guilty,_ she thought, one hand resting on her lower stomach. _Which is understandable, I suppose. That must be why he brought me here – some convoluted way of apologising for… for_ this. _Oh, lover._ She looked down at the space where her unborn child should have been. _You're almost as much of a hot mess as I am._

Still. There was a space library waiting for her. That kind of thing didn't happen every day. She put on a brave face and made her way through the crowd.

%

The museum was almost empty save for its exhibits, a maze of high glass boxes containing things both living and dead, many of which watched her mournfully through the foggy glass as she passed. Gwen was reminded of butterfly cases, each specimen pinned in place and collected, not for want of public display, but for personal satisfaction. She had never liked them much. There were strange things, impossible and fantastical yet undeniably real, but the display that unsettled her most was the inarguable human space suit up on the gallery above her, its bubble helmet reflecting her tiny figure.

She moved on pretty quickly.

Most of the exhibits were unlabelled, and there seemed to be no logic to the way everything was laid out. She slipped between a case containing a massive scarlet plant that waved and shivered despite the stillness of the air and what she was _fairly_ certain was one of those Chitauri things that had invaded New York a while back, and spotted a large crater in the middle of the floor that had been cleared of debris and now had fencing running around the edge of it to stop anyone falling in.

"Ah," said an oily voice behind her, "that would be where the infamous Guardians of the Galaxy paid us a visit, hm hm. Infinity Stones can be quite an inconvenience, if used… incorrectly."

Gwen did not turn around. Instead, she continued to examine the hole as though she knew someone had been there the whole time. "You should sue them for damages," she said, and the unctuous voice laughed.

"One of them was half-Terran, you know. Peter Quill. You might be related, hm?"

 _Now_ Gwen allowed herself to twist round, and saw the man clad in a great deal of red velvet watching her with eyes that glittered like geodes. "I don't think so," she said.

"I am lacking a Terran specimen," the man continued, stepping towards her with a calculating look in his eye. "You are a long way from home, my lady."

"And yet I do not feel out of depth, Mr Tivan," she said, and he smiled so suddenly it was like someone had hit a switch.

"Please," he said, folding into a gracious and overcomplicated bow, "call me Taneleer. And you are…?"

"Ratatosk," Gwen replied.

"Ra-ta-ta-ta-tosk! A Terran with an Aesir name. How delightfully unusual, although… perhaps less so, as of late. I have had Aesir visitors recently too, you know. A large man and a fair lady, who seemed to have no respect for the finer things." He looked up at her, and then abandoned his bow without his eyes ever leaving her face. "And what did you do to gain this name, Ratatosk?"

"Travel," she said simply. "I'm just a tourist, me."

"Hm, but you do not hold yourself as a tourist would. You walk as though this humble colony belongs to you," he said, and Gwen tilted her head to one side.

"Maybe it does," she said.

"You have sad eyes, Ratatosk. You are grieving." It was a weird accent, ethereal and looping, dragging out the Rs and Os. "You have lost something, very recently I surmise. Oh, how the living mourn."

Gwen folded her arms, her flinty expression remaining the same. "How big is your collection, Taneleer?"

"The largest in the galaxy, my lady," he said, sweeping off and beckoning for her to follow him. "Oh, the specimens I have acquired! Viscardi, Alpha Centaurians, Shi'ar, even a Jotunn – and my, those frost giants are slippery things!"

 _Loki,_ she thought, _he's got one of Loki's race stuck in here. Jesus, this isn't a museum. This is a freak show._ It seemed that, much like on Earth, space had its own sick bastards as well. The worst part was that the Collector didn't even talking about his exhibits like inanimate things - oh, no. He knew their names. He spoke of them like dear friends. And yet he still kept them entombed in these space-age glass jars, and did not seem to feel the slightest guilt about it. Gwen would be the first to admit she wasn't a saint, but at least she had _some_ standards.

 _I don't think he's gonna let me leave with just a souvenir and an offer of a membership card. There's too many vacant cases here for my liking. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but…_

"And here we have a Vorm!" said the Collector, clasping his hands to his breast. "You will notice that I have had the glass for this one specially reinforced with – Miss Ratatosk! Where are you hiding?"

 _Don't move,_ she told herself. _Don't even breathe._

Tivan spun slowly on his heel, grin still fixed in place. It was the sort of grin lizards gave insects, before they became dinner. "I still have so much to show you, Miss Ratatosk!"

 _Just Ratatosk, you son of a bitch,_ she thought. _I know you want a human more than you're letting on. Why else would you have bothered to learn English?_

"There's no need to be afraid, my lady. Knowhere is a haven for people who have run away from their native lands, run away from their grief. Why an Asgardian name? Who do you know? _Who took you here?!"_

Unable to stay still any longer, Gwen leapt from the lid of the case she was hiding on top of and soared over Tivan's head, landing on the next one across with a thud that rattled her shinbones and taking off at a run across the museum. She could move in a straight line whereas Tivan had to go around all his precious exhibits, and he was big and well-fed and heavy. Gwen was small, and needed to be fast. She jumped again, grabbed hold of the bottom of a levitating case above her, swung herself and dropped down and forwards.

"Watch where you place your feet, Miss Ratatosk!"

Gwen's boots landed on empty air where there should have been glass and she fell, catching the edge of the open-topped case at the last minute before she fell onto the floor inside. Something with more eyes than she had had hot dinners blinked and winked up at her, and with a grunt Gwen hauled herself out of it, balanced on the edge and jumped upwards, reaching for the pole that was holding the roof of the museum together where a hole had been blown into it by those Guardians of the Galaxy people. The whole building groaned ominously as Gwen swung herself up and balanced her way along the pole, trying very _very_ hard not to look down, to where it connected with the gallery that ran around the edge of the building.

 _Bar,_ she thought numbly, sprinting along it. _Head for noise._ She made the mistake of glancing behind her and saw shadows of _things_ flickering between the exhibits, heading for the stairs and for her quicker than anything should be able to move. She gulped and faced ahead again, following the sounds of strange music and yelling, and realised that there was a greenish glass window overlooking the main entrance to the museum, which opened out onto a bar she remembered being filled with gambling tables and more species in it than the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

"It loops round, Miss Ratatosk!" Tivan's voice called out as Gwen pulled off her jacket and held the back out in front of her. "There's only one way back –"

 _Down._

Ancient glass shattered around her as she plunged through the window, the coat protecting her face and hands from the worst of it as she fell, smashing through the rotten roof of some adjoining building with a scream and landing on some poor man – woman – _thing's_ head with a scream. She rolled off of him onto a long blue table covered in small running animals, gave silent thanks to her past self for leaving Algernon at home, and looked up into the not even _slightly_ surprised face of Loki.

"Hello," he said, "nice of you to drop in."

 **A/N yes, that last line was a pun. Yes, it was awful. Yes, I spent ten minutes laughing at it, alone, in my room, drunk. Yes, I'm a little bit ashamed. But seriously - if I weren't bound by canon, this fic would be entirely Gwen and Loki gallivanting, getting into trouble, being space pirates and ignoring all their responsibilities.**


	27. Chapter 27

Gwen jumped up, so spitting mad that the instincts of the racing creatures made them bolt for their owners. "You knew!" she yelled. "You knew he would try to collect me, didn't you, you snobby bastard!"

"Is now really the time?" Loki asked her, as the bar's security, a couple of trolls so powerful they didn't need weapons, advanced slowly. They did not seem to be the most intellectual of individuals, and Loki doubted even his silver tongue would be able to reason with them about the damage his companion had just done to their ceiling. "Tivan's guards will be on your scent."

"I bet you thought, oh, let's send her into mortal peril! THAT'LL GET HER SPIRITS UP, HUH?!"

Loki downed the last of his drink, grabbed Gwen's shirt and pulled her down from the table. He did not much like Tivan, and liked the creatures he hired to protect his collection even less. They made creatures of nightmare look like fairy tales, and once they got your smell they could hunt you to the ends of Knowhere. "I… may have had my suspicions," he admitted, dragging her out of the bar and pushing the trolls aside with ease. That was the thing with grunts of their kind - if one mved fast enough, one could get away with anything before they even realised something was wrong. He had had much practise of those kinds of situations with Thor as a child. "But, to my credit, you do now seem much more like your old self."

"YOU SON OF A BITCH!"

"See?" he said distractedly, and made the mistake of looking over his shoulder. "Perfectly in character. Oh, Hel. He's found a mob."

"What?" Gwen asked, stumbling. He picked her up and slung her over his shoulder. "Oi!"

"You can pay anyone to do anything in Knowhere," Loki explained, breaking into a run as the motley crowd that had gathered at the mouth of the museum started to follow them like a storm cloud tethered to a dog, only with more weapons. He would have cast an illusion, created a shade of himself and Gwen to lead them on a false trail, but it was an easily recognisable skill and he treasured his anonymity. "And people will take any excuse to engage in a little violence. If I put you down, will you try not to get us both killed?" he added, vaulting a food stall and kicking out at a vat of boiling soup so that it spilled out behind him, giving them another couple of seconds' lead.

"I ain't making any promises," she said, and Loki dropped her. "What about them things that were already in there? They were…"

"People don't like Tivan," Loki explained, taking Gwen's hand and hauling her along. "And his pets are yet more unpopular. Last time he released them, there was an outcry. Knowhere is the only place in the quadrant where they can be kept without breaking any laws. Jump."

They leapt across a spinal tap, the _thud_ of Loki's feet landing sending ripples across the yellow pool. "How do you know this?!"

"I have spies," he said simply, "shit."

"What now?"

"This street ends up back where we started," he said, "and it would be in poor taste for a king to commit murder in No Man's Land…" he spun around, looking for an option. "A _ha!"_

Gwen followed his gaze, and her eyes widened. Around the corner, the excitable sounds of the mob were getting closer. "Oh, no," she said, "no way."

"Would you rather stay and fight?"

"Anything other than _that!_ "

"Stop being so melodramatic."

"Me?! Melodramatic?! _You're_ the one who declared war on a planet 'cause you - AARGH!"

Loki shoved Gwen into the spinal fluid pool and dived in after her, the viscous liquid unpleasantly warm as it seeped through his clothes. He could just make out the black smudge that was Gwen kicking about and wrapped her arms around her, clamping a hand over her mouth in case she tried to scream and give them away.

 _Keep still,_ he thought at her, _come on, little mouse…_ Gwen stopped struggling, and if it had not produced bubbles Loki would have sighed in relief.

Listening underwater was less picking up sounds and more making sense of the vibrations, but Loki had good ears. He held his breath as the world shook from the stampeding feet of the mob crossing over their heads.

"Where'd they go?" someone said in Xandarian.

"There's a side alley, they must've used that!"

 _Ah,_ Loki thought, _yes. I had forgotten about that option._ Still, if they had gone that way they would still be running. He listened as the mob forged ever onwards, and relaxed his hold on Gwen. _Doesn't she realise that she can move again now?_

And then he remembered that humans can barely hold their breath a minute. How long had they been down here?

Real, genuine panic now spreading through him like fire instead of the icy rush of excitement, Loki took Gwen's waist and propelled her upwards until he heard the surface of the spinal fluid splash about as her body broke it. He kicked upwards, surfacing with a gasp, and dragged her soaked and unresponsive body out of the pool onto the dirty ground that surrounded it.

"Come on, mouse," he murmured, wiping the goo from her face. "This is not how someone like you should die, damn it! I won't let you!"

It was far too ridiculous an end, and far too much his fault to boot. Gwen would die on her own terms, on her own planet, either in a fiery explosion or with the successor to her empire at her side. Not here, not covered in this foul liquid and from hiding instead of standing her ground, not because of _him_ –

Gwen convulsed as her body retched on automatic, and her eyes snapped open as she lunged forward and vomited a stream of yellow into the pool. She retched again until nothing came out, coughed deeply, and fell back on her haunches with a grimace.

Loki stood statue-still, waiting for her to launch another rant against him. This time, he felt as though he deserved it.

Gwen tilted her head to look at him, her brown-black eyes reflecting the galaxies above their heads. The corner of her narrow lip twitched and, without any other warning, she began to laugh. Proper, rib-cracking, hysterical laughter, so infectious that it took Loki a moment to realise that he was laughing too. He was the king of the Nine Realms, and he was sat on the floor of a space pirate's haven, covered in yellow slime and almost crying with mirth along with a scrawny Midgardian sneak thief.

"Okay," Gwen said, once she had got her breath back, "let's _never_ do that again."

 **A/N okay but I am so ridiculously excited for Ragnarok because Taika Waititi is directing it and I love him and it looks set to be a proper comedy-style movie and THE HYPE IS REAL**


	28. Chapter 28

"So," said Gwen, sat back in her desk chair in the Burrow, clean and showered and feeling much the better for it, "what have we learned from this?"

"That I am to notify you in advance before sending you into dangerous situations," Loki said with a crooked grin.

"And that I should wait for people to stop chasing us before I start having a go at you," she countered. "Not that I didn't enjoy myself. Is that weird? It seems weird, but it was just… nice, y'know? Running away, only having simple problems. Being able to forget my old life."

"I know the feeling," Loki replied, "but new lives become old quickly, and you end up stuck in a cycle of endless running. Which is hardly fun."

"Guess so." She ran her hands through her hair, which had gone a little greenish from the yellow goop. She would have to re-dye it in the morning. "Knowhere was nice, but it was temporary. I feel old, Loki. Old and wise, and I don't like it."

"Said the mortal to the god," he said.

"But seriously… everything's different now, isn't it? We're not just pissing about anymore. Knowhere was our goodbye to all that. I don't feel like a kid playing at being an adult anymore. I have…" she shuddered. " _Responsibilities._ " She looked at him, his unusually serious face. That was a kingly face if ever she saw one. "And that's not all, is it?"

Loki took a fountain pen from her desk and spun it between his fingers. "No. Gwen, there is a war coming that could very easily bring this universe and every realm within it to its knees."

"I know," she said, "Thanos, right? The infinity stones? The Relics? Heimdall told me. And there was the aftermath of one in the museum, too. Tivan didn't even have the one you gave to him on display."

"That and more, I suspect. It seems as though Hel itself is rising... I cannot guarantee your safety on Midgard. You have your Avengers, but they will be nothing against the forces rising."

"See," she said patiently, "this is the thing. I don't _want_ you to guarantee my safety, Loki, because _I am not a fucking child_. I can look after myself, and besides, it's not just myself- it's the Rats, too. I have a family to take care of."

"I'm never going to convince you to leave this forsaken planet, am I?" he asked wretchedly.

She shook her head. "Besides, I should be looking out for you, not the other way round. King of Asgard's gonna be a pretty big target, I imagine."

"I should have been dead twice over already," he reassured her, "thrice, if some of your mighty heroes had had their way. I'll survive this."

"Like a cockroach," she joked, but her heart wasn't in it and he noticed.

"I'll make you a deal," he offered, which resulted in a raised eyebrow.

"Our entire relationship started because of a deal. I'm listening."

"If the Nine Realms somehow survive this, if everything returns to normal, then so do we," he explained, "but if I lose Asgard, or you your Rats, then one seeks refuge from the other. If we both lose everything, we run. Together. Although I do not think Knowhere would be a good place to return to."

Gwen almost laughed, but then she realised that the usual light that was in Loki's eyes when he joked was absent, replaced with a gravity that was rare but not unwelcome. He really cared, she thought. He cared enough about whatever this was to talk about something like an escape from the throne he had technically given his life to achieve. "That's one of the nicest things you've ever offered to do," she said. "You really do like plan Bs, don't you?"

"I need them more than any man ought."

"I guess..." She nibbled on her nail, her eyes following Algernon on his pointless journey around the desktop. _What do I have holding me down, apart from the Rats?_ she mused. _A daughter I can never see, and a valet I've dragged into an awful lot of trouble. And Loki, of course. Always, inescapably, Loki._ He was, after all, the reason she was no longer a nobody pickpocket. And, of course, there was the fact that he was most likely the only person in the world who loved her.

 _If the Rats were gone... hell. What else would I have to lose?_

"Deal," she stated, knowing as soon as she had said it that she would never have disagreed anyway. "So long as we don't, like, settle down or anything. That would be boring."

"Agreed."

"And…" she paused for a moment, running her thumb along her jaw as she struggled with what she was about to say. "I hate to remind you of any of my faults, but you have to remember I've probably only got another fifty years in me," she pointed out, hating to admit any weakness. "You have that a hundred times over."

Loki's reaction was unexpected, to say the least. His face hardened into something tougher than stone and, had she had a weaker constitution, Gwen would almost have been scared. "You think I haven't thought of that?" he asked incredulously. " _Me_? That I'm going to have to watch you grow frail and whitened, until you can barely walk and your eyes are clouded over so I'll never know what it's like to have you look at me again? That you'll die an old crone, and I'll have barely aged a day? Humans tend to die an awful lot, and I am _acutely_ aware of that. I almost lost you on Knowhere, and… Gwen, it's going to hurt me like Hel. Not to be selfish, but I come off far worse in this deal than you do. You're the one who gets to love a god, after all."

"You're not a god," she retorted, "you're an alien."

"Do people not worship me? Do they not fall to their knees for me? _You_ certainly do-" he ducked the knife that went flying in his direction.

"Don't be lewd," she chastised him. "I liked it better when you were being serious."

"Then I'll go back to that, then. I have no desire to watch you die, mouse."

It was difficult, even for Gwen, to know when Loki's sentiments were genuine, especially since an iron wall had slammed down behind his eyes as soon as she had begun to talk about him losing her. But he had said that last line with a brittle, fake lightness that had convinced her it was the truth, and with a sigh she poured him a drink from the bottle of scotch on her desk. "Can I ask you something?" she said, holding out his glass and filling another one for himself.

He took the drink with his elegant fingers forming a cage over the brim and swirled the golden liquid around inside. "Need I answer it?" he replied.

Gwen took a mouthful of the whisky and winced as it burned the back of her throat. "Why didn't you leave?" she asked. "When you found out that I was carrying your kid, why didn't you just ditch me and go back to Asgard. I couldn't've stopped you."

He gave her a look. "Odd question."

"Lucy's father left. Well, he – he didn't stay, anyway. And you, you have this whole life apart from me. It would be so easy for you to just, like, stop coming to Earth and pretend I don't exist. I mean – objectively, you've done worse than that. And I wouldn't blame you, either. If you wanted the kid, you could've just turned up when it was full grown and claimed it as your own without having to deal with any of the actual parenting stuff. The old legends are full of that happening – Loki, you had no good reason to stay, no precedent. It's not in your nature to be faithful. Why?"

Loki shifted in his seat, pulled one leg up into his lap and rested his elbow on his knee. "I –"

"And don't lie," she said, "please."

He nodded. "Because Midgard is becoming increasingly important in affairs of my domain," he said, "and I would be a fool to sever my most beneficial connection to it. Because I would much rather have your sympathy than your hatred. Because, shockingly, I care what my mother thought of me, and I have no doubt she would be horrified to see me abandon my kin. Because - what is it you call it? - _noblesse oblige._ Because I could not leave a human-Jotun hybrid unattended."

Gwen nodded. "Those are good reasons," she said, "I suppose."

"And because I love you," he added, and she raised an eyebrow. "Do you really not believe me? After all that has happened, you really think that I could leave you to carry such a burden on your own? You think I could ever turn my back on someone as magnificently bloody-minded, and acerbic, and oddly attractive as you? Why, Gwen? Is it because you think so lowly of me, or the same of yourself?"

Gwen's cheeks were hot, her eyes prickling. "Little bit of both," she mumbled, and with an exasperated sigh Loki stood up and walked around the desk, leaning on the edge of it next to her seat. He took her hand and turned it upwards, tracing the lines of her palm with his thumb.

"Lucy's father," he said, "left you with a variety of fascinating and inconvenient complexes."

"You should see the damage my parents left on me."

He smiled. It wasn't a malicious smile, and Gwen rather liked it. "I will not abandon you, little mouse," he said, with a warmth that a frost giant should have been unable to achieve. "Not now nor when you are ancient and haggard. Should our empires fall, I would be happy to run away with naught but you. It's quite selfish, really. If nothing else, know that I will always stay with you for the simple fact that you bring _me_ pleasure."

"Finally," said Gwen, "something I can believe."


	29. Chapter 29

The amount of trauma Gwen's body had been through meant that chronic pain was now a constant part of her life. That was what had started her off on drugs, a stupid attempt at self-medication, and she had finished with them hurting more than when she started. The heroin had been what made her tooth fall out, although if anyone asked she said it was a punch to the face, not to mention leaving her with the ability to catch any cold circulating in the state and the occasional twinge of arthritis in her left knee, of all places.

In addition to this, where Lucy had pressed against her spine during pregnancy she had damaged one of the vertebrae, and now her right thigh was completely numb save for aching in the hip whenever it got cold. She still got ghost pains along her c-section scar, and _real_ pains in the various stitches that had went along with it. She was sure that whoever stabbed her had left some shrapnel in the wound, the messy bastard, so _that_ played her up some nights as well.

She had had years to learn to manage it until all of this was just quiet white noise, but it _did_ mean that waking up some mornings was a bloody nightmare.

"Morning, miss." The strong smell of coffee made her open her eyes to the unimpressive visage of her gangly Geordie stood by her bed.

"Be gentle with me, James," she moaned softly, and whimpered as she propped herself up on one elbow. "It's thunderstorming outside, ain't it?"

"How did you know, miss?"

"I'm actually magic." In reality, her hip was giving her the jip, as it always did in bad weather. It was a surprisingly efficient barometer, in fact. A rare fortunate side effect of her formerly 90% narcotics diet. "Do I have any meetings today?"

"One with the barons at nine tonight, miss."

"Well, that'll be a lark," she said sarcastically, "sat in a leaky warehouse with a couple dozen egotistical megalomaniacs who all want me to work for them for free."

"At least you have some experience with egotistical megalomaniacs, miss."

"I guess you're right. This ain't my first rodeo, after all." She sipped her coffee and grimaced.

"I was actually talking about Mr Loki, miss, but that works too."

She momentarily forgot the aches and pains as she hooted with laughter. "Oh, man, I'm so telling him you said that."

"Please don't, miss. I'd like my head to stay attached to my shoulders, if it's all the same to you."

When he left her to it she showered until she felt normal again, then dressed in her usual serviceable black, filled Algernon's food bowl and went downstairs, where one of the Rats was cooking bacon.

"Who's out?" she asked Ella, the chef.

"Everyone except us five." The Rats had grown to two dozen since their inception. "We're gonna watch Paul Newman films and moon over his pretty face while Bobby doesn't have control of the TV, wanna join us?"

As tempting as the offer was, Gwen had filing to do. "I'll pass, thanks. I've got work."

"You're boring."

"Ugh, don't remind me." She stomped back upstairs into a room filled with rows of metal filing cabinets, and one paper-covered table in the middle. The sight was almost disparaging enough to convince her to convert to digital. Almost.

James came and roused her at about eight, when the thunder and lightning had increased to apocalyptic amounts and the other Rats had returned from their tags looking like drowned, uh, rats. She hailed a cab at the first opportunity and got out a block before the old shipment warehouse the crime bosses were all meeting in, swearing profusely as the heavens opened unto her.

"Mouse," one of them said as she stomped through the impromptu security, "y'look ravishing."

"Anyone got a towel?" she asked, to no avail. "Did I miss anything?"

"Nah, we were just getting started." She took her place at one end of the U-shaped cluster of tables, a few seats down from Ben, who winked at her. She raised a hand in response, took off her hoodie and wrung it out to one side as the meeting began.

She liked that, after having been a part of the dark side of New York for so long, she finally had a say in how it was ran. And unlike the others, most of which had inherited their positions one way or another, she had created hers for herself and as such nobody was there to take it away from her. Because of how she had started, she was often the voice of the homeless, the ones without gangs to protect them in the meetings, and for some reason these big, powerful men listened to her, a 5'3 English girl with a pet mouse on her shoulder.

Perhaps it was because she had known many of them beforehand, and thus gained their trust. Perhaps it was because she had proved her worth with the Rats, with the opposition she had killed. Perhaps they were aware that she would rather everyone had a fair share of power except for the people in the room, and she was smart enough and ruthless enough to make that happen.

Sometimes Gwen wondered why she hadn't, but then she realised the chaos that would ensue both in the underworld and topside if the crime families were to disappear. They were a necessary evil to maintain order (dammit, now she was starting to sound like Loki) and besides, she could gradually erode their power from the inside. That, and if she refused to be a part of it herself, who would speak up for the voiceless?

"Mouse!"

"Hm? Oh, sorry. What's the damage?"

"Too much," said Martoni from the head of the table with his usual grim expression. "We got supplies down there, but the authorities won't go near it. We're all those people've got, and even us going in there is risky with O'Finley controlling all the entrances, along with every other part of it. Two of mine are dead already."

O'Finley had broken away from the syndicate six months previously, and was now controlling a downtown area of Brooklyn with blockades and ransoms. Not only was the area valuable to the other crime barons, but O'Finley had effectively taken the entire district hostage so that everyone was forced to pay his tolls.

"We don't need to take out everyone," some guy reasoned, "his men haven't been loyal since he left the syndicate and took the district, it was a step too far for them. We just need to checkmate _him_ , and they'll let the area go."

"I can take him out," she said, and Martoni raised an eyebrow.

"You sure about that, kid? He ain't some low life tagger, he was one of us. He'll have protection."

"He'll be expecting your offences," she explained, "but not mine. He left before I became public knowledge, remember? My Rats having been getting in and out of there without a second glance, he doesn't suspect a thing. All you need to do is tell me his base."

"You'll send a Rat in?"

She shook her head. "Too dangerous, I'll go myself."

Martoni half-smiled. "That's not normally how we do things around here, ma'am."

One of the barons' secondaries had repeatedly called her pet names- sugar, babe, etc- for the entirety of her first meeting. He was currently residing somewhere in the bottom of the Atlantic, with two lumps of concrete tied to his feet.

"They're not just my employees, they're my wards. And I can handle it," she said, with more confidence than she was feeling. "Trust me."

"No," another one said, "she's not been around half a year and we trust her with this?"

"Plus, if we lose her we lose the Rats."

"I can vouch for her," Ben spoke up, and Gwen smiled behind her hand. "She says she can do something, she'll do better. Learnt that from experience."

"I'm really, really good at not dying," she told the syndicate, to a low rumble of laughter. "Give me his last known address and two weeks."

"Why do you care?" someone asked. "You don't normally get a stick in this kinda stuff."

"Because there's civilians involved, now."

Martoni inclined his head. "See my man for details at the end of the meeting."

"Yes, sir. Thank you."

"You won't be thanking me when O'Finley's yanking out your fingernails one by one since he found you snooping. I want him gone, Mouse. He's a blemish on my record."

"Yes, sir." She might not give a damn about Loki's authority, but Martoni's was immediate and nigh-on tangible. She respected him because she knew he would not hesitate in killing her himself, since unlike Loki he had no honour. If she tried to take him down, there would be no mercy, no kneeling; just the thud of her body hitting the floor.

Self-preservation was knowing when to pick and choose your battles.

 _And I've picked the wrong one,_ she thought, _what did I have to go and open my big bloody mouth for? Vain, that's my problem. And now O'Finley's gonna give me the manicure from hell. I'm gonna die. Idiot._

%

" _What_?!"

"Relax!" she said airily, waving a hand as she sorted through the bag of stuff she had nicked from her various travels, and that which Loki had occasionally brought from Asgard: the Knowhere man's watch, a pretty Asgardian ring, some weird fruit thing… "It'll be fine…"

"You just told me you were going to die!" Loki said. "That does not fall in with the definition of fine." His eyes moved to her hands, which were poking the fruit curiously. "Don't eat that, it's poisonous."

"O- _kay_." She carefully wrapped it up in a tissue and put it in her bedside drawer. "I was being melodramatic."

"I am beginning to think this 'live fast die young' concept was a bad idea."

"That had nothing to do with it," she told him, "this was part of my natural recklessness and idiocy."

"Oh, well that makes me feel so much better," he snapped.

"Sarcasm is the-"

"Don't say it!" He pursed his lips. "Be serious. How likely are you to survive this?"

"Uh… fifty fifty," she estimated, "forty/sixty for, if you were to put a bet on it."

"I wouldn't. I'm coming with you."

"My darling psychopath," she said sweetly, "no. I dug myself this hole and besides, isn't there a Jotunn resurgence going on or something? Not to mention all the Infinity Stones palaver."

"Yes," he said slowly, "I am amazed you even took note of that."

"As am I. It's a stealth mission, posh boy, it'll be easier on my own. And besides, if you want to bolster your ego some you can still say you helped me with it."

"And how did I do that, exactly?"

She took the swaddled fruit out of the drawer and tossed it into the air. "Poisonous, huh?" she asked, catching it with nimble fingers. To her relief, he began to smile wickedly. "Is it painful?"

"Exceedingly. If there were any survivors, they would most likely describe it as like acid."

"His screams'll be music to my ears, then."

"You are worryingly sadistic sometimes, mouse."

"Only to people who deserve it. How much'll it take to kill a grown man?"

"Only a few drops of the juice," he told her, and laughed as she blanched.

"I am going to wash my hands," she said, " _right now_."

"Probably wise."

The conversation had cheered Gwen up a little, but Loki's expression when he thought she wasn't looking unsettled her again. There was annoyance that she hadn't allowed him to come along for the ride, she knew that would be there, but it seemed stronger than she supposed it would be - that, and perhaps a little of the recklessness she had felt that day as well. Surely he wasn't _jealous_ of her embarking on this hare-brained scheme, was he?

She dismissed the thought as it came; she had always found it difficult to read Loki, the god of lies was good at withholding his true emotions. She was just projecting onto him that was all- and besides, what could he possibly do while ruling as Odin? He wouldn't do anything to endanger his home, Thor too even if he wouldn't admit it. At least as king he was bound from doing anything rash, like trying to take over another planet on behalf of an intergalactic heavyweight. He would be fine.

And still she worried… no, she had her own problems. Like trying to survive a suicide mission.

 **A/N so the whole alternating-POV-per-chapter thing I had going on sort of... disintegrates for the next couple instalments. Whoops.**


	30. Chapter 30

A woman in a black dress could be anything, from maid to monarch- she could go anywhere, be anyone, and nobody would bat an eyelid. Currently, for want of a better option, she had answered questions to her identity by threatening that "Gerry'll be pissed off you didn't let his best girl in, and trust me suga, you do not wanna see Jerry when he's pissed."

It worked surprisingly well. A slight shift in her posture and the smoothing down of her hair, and the black dress went from clothing a girlfriend to one of O'Finley's many PAs, swanning through the old rec centre (what kind of bastard sets up his crime den in a kids' rec centre?) until she reached the office of one Geremio O'Finley.

It was so late into the night that it was morning, and the guard outside his door was too sleepy to object to another woman in an ambiguous dress going into the boss' office. She entered without objection, silently locked the door behind her and found O'Finley sprawled in his chair with his feet on the desk, smoking a cigar that must have been one in a long line to stain the ceiling yellow.

"I'll give ya… seven outta ten for body, and four for ya face," he said, and laughed. She giggled, and carried the plate she had been couriering over to him.

"Dinner for ya, Mr O," she said in a heavy Bronx accent. He nodded.

"You cook it?"

"Nah, Mr O. I ain't good at that kinda stuff," she said, hesitating as she turned back to the door.

"You better learn, girl. It's an important skill," he said and squeezed her backside as she went to walk away.

"Oh, Mr O," she sighed, "I wish you hadn't done that."

He'd started on the chicken legs first, leaving the mashed potato (imbued with the Asgardian fruit's juice, of course) untouched. "What the hell makes you think you can talk to me like that?" he asked, spraying food everywhere as he talked through a mouthful. Gwen might not have had the best table manners, but at least she didn't projectile launch whatever was in her mouth at the time.

"Swallow," she said coldly, turning around to face him.

"If I had my way," he replied, "that's what you'd be doing later tonight, heh heh."

She laughed again, took two steps forward, scooped up a handful of potato and yanked his jaw open by sticking her hand in his mouth and pulling down his lower teeth. She forced the food down his gullet and pushed his chin up with her other hand.

"I said," she snarled, " _swallow_."

A few minutes later, when O'Finley had stopped thrashing about, she let go of his head and looked down at her hands, which were covered in food and spit and whatever the froth was that he had been producing in the last few seconds of her life.

"Ew," she muttered, and wiped the gunk off as best she could with his tie, before using it to wipe the residue from around his mouth. "Much better."

When she opened the door she saw that a large group of people had gathered, and were staring with horror at her. His kicking must have been louder than she thought.

"There musta been somethin' in the mash," she told them calmly, "he just started choking, there was nothing I could do."

"But-"

"Best guy t'contact now would be Martoni, I reckon," she continued, "he'll know what to do."

"But-"

"You," she said, pointing at a guy who looked more relieved than shocked, "call him, now. I'll phone an ambulance- ya never know, right?" The crowd parted to let her through, and when she was out of sight she smiled to herself. A black dress and a knack for blagging could get you in anywhere.

By the time she reached the perimeter O'Finley had set up, walking at a leisurely pace so as not to attract attention, the blockades were already being dismantled and Ben was waiting for her with a grin that glittered with a gold.

"Thought you'd pop up here," he said, "nice work."

"Cheers. You don't happen to have any hand sanitizer on you, by any chance?"

"Nah, sorry."

"Don't worry about it. Can't believe nobody had got to him before, it was easy as the alphabet for me," she told him smugly.

"Yeah, yeah. Well, he's arrogant and besides, no one expects a pipsqueak like you."

"I'm like the Spanish Inquisition."

He chuckled. "Somethin' like that, Pinky. You wanna lift home? I got one of the boys to drive up with an extra car."

"Ta. Anti-bac wipes?"

"Nope."

She sighed. "See you later, Ben."

The ride home was uneventful, save for the bottle of water on the back seat- she pounced on it immediately and poured it over her hands, sticking them out of the window as the driver took a roundabout route to the burrow. James was waiting nervously on the doorstep; his face lit up and he ran out to hug her.

"I was worried sick, miss!"

"Bloody hell, James. It was a hit, not world war sodding three." She patted him awkwardly on the back. "Can you, uh, can you let go now please?"

"Right." He released her and handed over Algernon, who she lifted up to eye level.

"I hope you behaved," she scolded him, and he nudged her finger affectionately. "Good boy, and don't lick me 'til after I showered."

"Delivery came for you miss, and Mr Loki's in the upstairs kitchen too."

"Good, good." She walked inside, and Bobby stood to attention as she passed. She was already yawning as she made her way into the ground floor kitchen, where Loki was stood examining a bottle of champagne.

"Compliments of Mr Martoni," he said, "full payment to come tomorrow. News travels fast, it seems."

"Pour me a pint, will you?" she asked, slipping Algernon into his kitchen cage and washing her hands with an awful lot of soap in the sink. "I didn't even ask for payment."

"How out of character," he replied, "he must like you, then."

"I'm a very likable person," she reminded him, wiping her hands on her skirt.

"Debatable." She grinned as arms took her waist and spun her round to look at him, and he kissed the grin from her face.

But something about his face felt wrong between his fingers… she leaned back, but everything looked fine. So then why…?

"Loki," she sighed, "drop the glamour."

At least he didn't argue; the clear skin melted away to reveal a bloody black eye and a gash over his temple. "Try to keep the pity to a minimum," he instructed her.

"What happened? Don't lie, I'll know if you do."

"I… became bored," he said, shifting so he was stood next to her. "Odin is old, he rules from his throne. Which is right in times of peace, but… I am not Odin, whatever my people think. I still have youth enough to grow restless every now and then, and since I would rather not channel that energy into reckless diplomacy I need to find other ways to spend it."

"And?"

"I wore the face of a guard, I went into a tavern and happened to find myself in the middle of a brawl," he said, "Thor was there, too, although I think the same could be said for half of Asgard."

"You're an idiot," she told him, grabbing a clean cloth and holding it under the cold tap. He winced as she pressed it to the side of his head. "I think it might need stitches."

"I'll be fine," he muttered, pushing his hand away.

"You want a scar, then? Go to a healer."

"I can't, can I? I cannot reveal myself," he pointed out.

"That and you're too bloody proud. I'll stitch it, don't worry. I've done it before."

"Somehow I am not filled with confidence," he said as she pulled a needle and a spool of fine silk from the cupboard, along with a bottle of whisky to clean the former with.

"Oh, shut up posh boy. It's not like you got anyone else, is it?" she said without thinking, and wilted under the glare he gave her. "Sorry."

"You should be," he murmured.

"Are you drunk?" she asked, kneeling on the counter so she could reach his forehead.

"A little."

"Good. That'll help with the pain. Hold still," she ordered, and pulled the needle through his skin as he swore.

"I think I need more alcohol," he said.

"Tough, because the bourbon's for cleaning the needle and the champagne's mine. Now don't be a baby." Eyes narrowed in concentration, she finished the suture and tied it off. "At least it should all fade, so your pretty face is still intact." She kissed his cheek where the bruising was lightest. "Please don't do something stupid just because I did. And if you are going to, at least wait until you know I'm safe first. One of us should remain sensible at all times."

"Since you asked so nicely," he half-smiled.

"You can also say thank you for me stitching you back up."

"I _can_ ," he agreed, "whether I will or not is another matter entirely." She poked one of the darker bruises. "Ach!- fine, fine. Thank you, mouse."

"You're welcome." She paused for thought. "See, the real question is if you caused more damage than you got."

"What kind of god do you take me for?" he asked, in a mock-insulted voice. "That tavern master will never walk straight again."

"Good man." She tilted her head to one side. "How do you look so good with a busted-up face?"

"The touch of Odin," he said, "you should see my Jotunn form."

"Wait, what? This isn't what you really look like?"

He ran a hand through his hair. "No. I am an ugly thing, Gwen."

"Show me," she said.

"What?"

"I'm nosy and I'll keep badgering you until you do," she persisted, "I wanna see what a frost giant looks like!"

"No."

"Please? Pretty please?"

"Still no."

"Show me, Loki. Show me show me show me show mmmf mmf mmf-" She glared at him, over the hand he had put over her mouth.

"Will you shut up if I do?" he asked, and she nodded. "Fine. Try not to scream," he warned her, "Odin's spell goes deeper than my magic, but I can use a glamour if you allow me a moment to recall what I actually look like…" he looked down, and his eyes went from green-blue to a dark, pupil-less red.

It was nowhere near as bad as she expected- his skin turned to cobalt and archaic markings flowered across it, over his eyes and beneath the bruises. She didn't see what was so ugly about it, but then she saw the shame in his expression. Clearly, the monstrosity of Jotunn was a subjective thing, and she wondered what stories Asgardian children were told to make them be so fearful and repulsed of Loki's true kin. She also wondered how many of them were true.

"Hey," she said, "y'know what?"

He looked up at her with heavy eyes. "Say it."

"You… have you ever heard of the Smurfs?" she asked, and started to snigger.

He shook his head. "I really cannot believe you, mouse."

"Gimme a moment." She straightened her face with difficulty. "I guess it's personal, 'cause I don't think it's that bad. But then, I wasn't raised to see this as the monster under the bed." Her thumb traced the markings down his cheekbone. "You're still a pretty son of a bitch. Do these mean anything?"

"Perhaps, but the Aesir have never asked. Similar engravings mark the Casket of Ancient Winters."

"Stupid name."

"Indeed." His usual skin tone returned at her touch, and quickly overtook the blue again. "I told you not to pity me," he said, and Gwen realised that her thoughts must have found their way into her expression.

"When have I ever listened to you?" she asked, and he lifted one shoulder. "But anyway, as far as I'm concerned, that's not you. Just like my birth name ain't me anymore. You're this relatively normal-looking dude, and I'm Gwen, and Mouse too I guess. See? What you are by birth don't dictate who you are by choice, don't make you any more or less of a person. Yeah?"

He nodded.

"Well, that was interesting, but there is an unopened bottle of liquid starlight over there, and it's a beautiful night. Be nice if I could spend it with the guy I love without him sulking." She pulled the cork from the champagne with her teeth, and quirked an eyebrow at him. "Whaddaya say, Aesir?"

"Weak Midgardian drink and a poky bedroom," he said, "how could I possibly resist?"


	31. Chapter 31

When Loki woke up in the deep Midgardian night of the city that never seemed to sleep, Gwen wasn't there. The bed, the part where she should have been lying, was cold, but he could hear her soft breathing still, so she must have been nearby. He pulled on some clothes and walked out of the bedroom into her office, and found her curled up in her desk chair with a half empty bottle of liquor that had been full when he had seen it earlier that evening.

"You aren't in bed," he said.

"Nope," she replied, and her face twisted as she downed another mouthful of alcohol.

This wasn't like her. When Gwen had nightmares, she never ran away from them. "Are you coming back?"

"Nope," she repeated. Her voice was shaky.

Loki considered this for a brief moment, then sat down opposite her and poured a drink into a crystal glass for himself. "Tell me about the dream," he said calmly, leaning back in his chair.

Gwen sniffed, and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "You know what's bullshit?" she asked him, "sex being treated like, like this precious thing that's the creation of life, and who cares if the woman actually gets anything good out of it, as long as the _bloke_ gets off then it's okay, it's correct, because it's – it's creating _life._ And then when it actually, you know, when it does, when the bird gets up the duff, then suddenly that's all lies and how dare she, how fucking _dare_ she, be a… fucking _receptacle?_ "

Loki, who was perfectly aware of his prowess in all matters, sexual or otherwise, did not deign to think that this rant was aimed at him. "Are you considering celibacy?" he asked, and she spat. "It was him, wasn't it? Lucy's father?"

"Don't call him that," she snarled, "he doesn't get to be called that. He conned me into it and then he _left._ And I'm supposed to be over it, anyway."

"And yet," said Loki, "you are not in bed."

Gwen looked away. "I hate bad dreams," she muttered, "the rest of the world's shitty enough, I don't need my own head turning against me."

"My darling mouse," Loki sighed, "don't be an idiot."

"Bugger off."

"Nobody will ever do that to you again," he told her, and she raised a disbelieving eyebrow at him.

"Oh, really?" she asked in a savage tone, "will you _stop_ them, oh brave prince?"

"It's king, actually," Loki replied, "and no, I will not. _You_ will." She huffed. "Gwen, I could take you to a crystal palace guarded by a thousand men where the winds themselves will sing your virtues, I could give you followers that sanctify the very ground you walk upon and decree it so that to so much as look upon you would be a crime of the highest treason. I could smite the man who gave you such a foolish complex where he stood, and I could make you my queen and love you as my wife, so that you cry my name to the heavens in gratitude."

"We've talked about this," Gwen began, but he held up a hand.

"Let me finish. I could do all of that for you and more, little mouse, but I also know you are as stubborn as the rest of your kind. Far too stubborn to let me do any of _that_ , and besides… I trust you."

Her eyes were sparkling rather brighter than normal, and they both ignored the tear that carved a path down one of her cheeks. "I wouldn't," she said.

"Oh, you misunderstand. I wouldn't trust you with my riches, my empire and so on. But I _would_ trust you with _yours_ ," he said, "because, you see, I consider you to be a person capable of making her own decisions. And you are a fearsome woman when the mood takes you, mouse. I do not doubt that the tides would turn at your word. And that is why you're being an idiot – you will never let anyone hurt you again. I trust you to ensure _that._ "

Gwen stared at him for a moment, and then broke out into a melancholy little smile. "Thank you," she said.

"Well, it's the middle of the night. I'm very tired, and probably quite out of character. Now, let's never mention this again." He stood up, and offered her his hand. "The bed will not hurt you, Gwen. Not if you do not let it."

She exhaled, then took his hand and let him pull her to her feet. "None of the moaning about sex was regarding you, by the way. You're great."

"I know," he said, "but I'm glad you're aware." He watched her as she hesitated by the entrance to her bedroom again, and kissed the top of your head. "I'd appreciate the company," he whispered, "you aren't the only one to have nightmares, upon occasion."

"Yeah," she mumbled, "but yours are of things worth being scared of. Not _beds._ "

"People have violated my trust just as they have yours," Loki said, "albeit in different ways. So while the way in which it is communicated may be different, my complexes are no more or less than yours. Gwen, please. I want to sleep."

He felt her slump against him, and thought about how he was most likely the only person in the world whom she would admit her weaknesses to, and vice versa. It took a great deal of faith for that, faith Loki did not know he was even capable of, and he wondered how much faith she had in _him_ that she would let him into her home, the home of women she had sworn to protect, into her bed. That was what love boiled down to, in the end. Having faith in people, despite all their failings and your own.

"Fine," said Gwen, "but only 'cause you asked so nicely. But if you even _vaguely_ allude to me being your queen or wife again, I will kill you."

"I would expect no less from you, little mouse."

%

"Explain it," Loki said to Gwen as she deposited Algernon on the table after a stressful meeting with the local mafia. "I've always wondered."

"Wondered what?"

"Your indulgence with the rodent."

"I like him," she said defensively.

"He doesn't talk," Loki pointed out, arms folded and a small frown on his face.

"Exactly!" she perched on the edge of her desk and, with difficulty, removed her fancy shoes. In reality, the little mouse had a similar story to hers – she had found him, a reject from a high-profile scientific experiment, sniffing around the bins near the research facility. "Haven't you got any lesser species companions?"

"My brother," Loki said, and she sniggered.

"A couple years ago, you would've said me."

"You are an exception to your race," he told her as she rubbed the balls of her feet.

"Cheers. Hey, you know what I was thinking about the other day?" she asked, and he raised an inquisitive eyebrow. "You, being a god. Or, rather, _not_ being one."

"Do elaborate," he said in a bored voice that didn't quite hide the interest beneath it.

"So – so you come here as a superior species and you, y'know, kill and shag and war on our land with all your superiority and that, and then you leave and yeah, we take you for gods because we're not advanced enough to know aliens exist yet. And, understandably, that goes to your head and you think, fuck yeah we're gods, blah blah blah, and we just sort of take that as fact, right?"

"Right."

"But – see, historians and that, they've gone back and they've proven that our ideas of what caused like, these mythological beings and that are just… people seeing sealions and thinking they're mermaids, and stuff like that. Your lot are just a different type of sealion, see? But we still talk about mermaids. The essence of the myth doesn't come from its source, but what grows up around it. So for all your extended lifespan and super strength and whatever – you're not a _god._ The only gods are the ones humanity created. So if we can conceive of these great and terrible things, and these epic myths and legends, while _you're_ just assuming they're about you without having the imagination to come up with your own, then who's really the superior species here?"

"Are you done?" Loki asked.

"Yeah."

"You look very proud of yourself," he said, "and your half-boiled argument."

"I am, thank you very much. When did you stop listening?"

"Sealions."

"Ah," Gwen nodded, "that was a good bit. You were missing out." Loki laughed. "Y'know, I once read a version of a Loki where he actually really liked Earth history."

"Oh, really?" her lover asked.

"Yep. He wasn't as pretty as you, though."

Loki really was very pretty, Gwen mused, in a carelessly handsome kind of way. She had known very many attractive people in her life, and what set _him_ apart from the rest of them was that, while he most definitely knew he was good-looking, he didn't… how should she put it? Take up as much space. When a beautiful person walked into a room, it was often all anybody could notice. But Loki somehow avoided that effect, and unless he wanted otherwise it was perfectly easy just to not notice him completely.

It must have been something to do with his trickster status, Gwen mused, and the same reason he did not seem to mind ruling under the guise of somebody else. People like Loki did not seek power for its fame and glory, but rather the power itself. She rather felt that it was purer that way, too. Gwen sympathised with that sort of motivation – she had fought for her position of authority because she disagreed with how everyone else on the bloody planet was handling theirs.

 **A/N two shortish filler chapters in one update.**


	32. Chapter 32

Loki materialised in Gwen's office as per usual, and followed the sounds of loud and enthusiastic singing to her recently refitted bathroom (neither of them could so much as glance in its direction after he had found her passed out in there).

"Don't bother knocking or anything," she said cheerfully as he walked in, cheerfully due to the fact there was a half-empty bottle of wine on the floor beside her. She was sat in the bath which had been filled to the brim with bubbles and lined with candles, and was reading the Asgardian history book he had given her with it propped up on a makeshift shelf.

"Please don't stop with the ballad on my account," he smirked, and she blew a handful of soap suds at him.

"Feel free to join me in here," she said, as he sat down on the floor facing her and held out his hand to allow Algernon to run up his arm.

"As delightful as that sounds," he replied, and she rolled her eyes. "I'll have to decline. Unless you happen to enjoy bathing in freezing cold water."

"You are so weird," she said, "would you like to hear about the terrible day I've had?"

"No, but I'd be happy to tell you about mine," he replied, taking a swig from the wine bottle himself as Algernon curled up in a fold of his tunic.

"Right, so there was this big syndicate meeting today and there's this new capo, yeah…"

"I never realised how many soul-baring conversations Odin had with his favourite son before I had to take his place," Loki began bitterly as Gwen continued to babble, neither of them paying each other any heed.

"…And Martoni, the arrogant bastard, _takes his side_! I bet it's because he's got a dick…"

"… Of course, Thor, you're right in that I cannot _possibly_ imagine how _hard_ it is for you to have a mortal lover, no please, tell me more about her mother…"

"… The son of a bitch tells me to shut up! Well, obviously, I told him to suck my metaphorical."

"… that a bathroom rota is really none of my concern." They both finished talking at the exact same time, which made Gwen snigger.

"I love you," she smiled, and he raised an eyebrow.

"Understandable," he grinned, and this time she kicked the bath water at him. "I do believe you're drunk, mouse."

"Just a little." Her smile faded and she leaned forward, took Algernon from him and cupped the creature in her damp hands. "I think I've really fucked up this time, Loki. I pissed off the most dangerous man in the state."

"What do you intend to do about it?"

She snorted. "Asgard's probably too close for a hiding spot. How's Jotunheim this time of year?"

"Cold," he said, "obviously. What are you truly planning?"

"I dunno. Plans don't really work out that well for us, in case you hadn't noticed. I don't wanna die, Loki. I really, _really_ like my life."

"Then neutralise the threat before it manifests," he said, and her narrow eyes widened.

"Loki, this isn't some greasy old bloke who pissed me off, this is _Martoni_. He's got the entire New York mob under his thumb, from the big mafia boys down to anyone who's so much as smoked a joint."

"My impression was that they all switch allegiances as the wind changes," he shrugged, "of course, if you don't believe yourself capable…"

He had expected those last words to incite her into arguing she was perfectly capable of anything, but they had the opposite effect. "No, I'm not! This is like you trying to overthrow Thanos, posh boy. It's not that I don't want to- of course I want to, imagine what I could do with that power- it's that I _can't_." With a decidedly miserable expression, she deposited Algernon on the side of the bath and drew her legs up to her chest so she could rest her chin on her knees. "And don't offer to help. This is my business."

"I believe you could overtake him even if you don't," he said, which made her half-smile.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"Indulge me. What _would_ you do with that power?"

Her eyes glazed over. "Give the profit that gets generated to those who actually need it, instead of hoarding it all myself like every other big suit does."

"Ever the Socialist," he murmured under his breath.

"Expand our contacts in legitimate areas too, since corruption in the forces dropped massively since the Avengers when they got all scared. But even though there's more of 'em now it's a new team, they're not so heavily based in the centre of New York, SHIELD's lost both its legs and besides, people have been less than impressed with them since Ultron- if I could get the men to cut back on proving how rich they are, which I could if I was in charge, we could effectively double our remit. I could leave Bobby in charge of the Rats if I were to do it, easy. Stop _grinning_ at me, Lejemand, I know what you're doing."

"And what would that be?" he asked, all innocence.

"Trying to tempt me. But I'm not thick and besides, why do you care? It's none of your business."

"It would be useful to know the woman who has half of Midgard's most powerful city under her thumb," he said. "And frankly, I don't see what's preventing you."

"Respect," she said, "and fear." And he could see it in her face, that fear- an unfamiliar and somewhat unsettling expression.

"You really are scared, aren't you?" he asked her, and she nodded and looked away.

"It would take a lot more than him shutting me up or refusing to listen to me every now and then to make me want to take him down," she mumbled. "Sorry to disappoint you."

"You've done worse," he said lightly, and she glared at him. His scooping up of foam in the crook of his finger and covering her nose in it didn't help.

"Arsehole. Y'know," she added, wiping the bubbles away and readjusting her septum piercing, "I'll have known you exactly thirty months, come tomorrow."

"A mere blink of an eye to an immortal like myself."

"I _knew_ you were gonna say something like that. But it feels like longer, dunnit? What with everything that's happened."

He opened his mouth to contradict her, then thought better of it. "Yes," he admitted, "although thirty months is hardly what one would call an anniversary."

"Well, _I_ thought it was worth bringing up. Besides, we probably spent the year milestones arguing."

"I wouldn't be surprised." He glanced up at the clock, even though it didn't really mean much to him. "I must go, there is a war council at midnight."

"Exciting," she said sarcastically, as he kissed her forehead.

"Enjoy being content with not having as much power as is easily within your reach," he said, dragging the conversation back to Martoni.

"Oh, go and stab some orcs or something, posh boy."

%

All Loki wanted to do was sleep uninterrupted for a night. But it appeared that the Allfather considered slumber an activity for tomorrow while Loki rather preferred being able to blot out the rest of the world when it became too incessantly annoying, albeit only for a few hours. After the war council he was desperate enough for rest that he created a shade of Odin to lie in bed on his behalf so that the advisors and servants could disturb _that_ instead, grabbed a purple crystal and collapsed, half-undressed, into bed next to bed. It was a mark of how desperate he was, that he was actually seeking refuge on Midgard. Still, at least nobody was expecting it.

But once he had resumed his old familiar place next to the little human, he found that sleep evaded him and merely watched her steady breathing, instead. Gwen had said to him once, when she was so close to falling asleep herself that thoughts were almost as nonsensical as dreams themselves, that her favourite kind of silence was "the one made up of noise". She had said it was because she had slept on the streets for so long; she said it was why she now always had her bedroom window open. Loki had brushed it off as one of the countless stupid things she often said- how could silence be made of noise?

Now, as he listened to her dream, he understood. Jotunns had good ears, and he could hear for miles; different layers of sound, get gradually closer and quieter, balancing each other out into a noise so level and constant it became a form of silence. Farthest away was the roar of primitive aircraft in the pollution-stained sky, nearly but not quite drowned out by the higher, less powerful growl of the gridlocked cars. Then there was the babble of people, their voices and other sounds, in turn balanced out by the low rumblings of the burrow's heating system and the distant, murmuring voices of the Rats downstairs. And then, finally, there was inside the bedroom itself; the scritch-scratch noises of a mouse in its cage and the soft, near-silent breathing of the room's other two occupants, Gwen's much more shallow than his own.

The room she took up in the bed was tiny, curled up as tightly as possible and pressed into his side despite not even knowing he was there. It made sense, he supposed, since for years of her life she must have had to sleep in any nook and cranny she could find. But still, she looked so young and fragile when she slept, and he instinctively wrapped his own body around hers in some pointless attempt to protect her. If she knew that was why they slept so tightly wrapped, she would probably go on some mad rant about not needing to be protected, but she was asleep and therefore he could do what he wanted. And, in this case, what he wanted was to show that he cared about her, even if she would never know about it.

She twisted round so she was facing away from him and, in her sleep, pulled his arm further across her and murmured something about dynamite. "Gwen," he whispered, "wake up before something explodes."

"Mmnhnn," she mumbled, "no. 'M busy."

"Doing what?"

"Butch Cassidy needs me, Lo. 'M'is only hope." She rolled back over and opened one bleary eye. "I was having a really nice dream, and you had to go and ruin it. There's no Martoni in the dream world, Loki. No misogynist crime lords."

"I apologise profusely."

"'S fine." He felt her hands press against his chest, small and cold from bad circulation. "Aren't you in a war council, or summat?"

"I ran away."

Her laugh was so soft he barely even heard it. "I wish we could always be like this. Like, if Asgard and New York were just next door. I wanna sleep with you every night."

"I understand," he said, it being far too late at night/early in the morning for two-facedness. "Contact is... pleasant."

"It makes sleeping easier. I don't like it when I wake up and you're gone, or if I have to get up before you. I mean, as much as I like my life, I kinda just wanna..."

"Stay here forever?"

"Mhm."

He left a kiss on her cheekbone. "Laziness does not become you, little mouse."

"It's been years since you last called me that. And I don't exist to be becoming, either."

"And yet you so often are." Another kiss, this one on her temple. "To me, at least."

"You're pretty biased, to be fair. Also surprisingly cute in the middle of the night. Loki?"

"Yes?"

"You're nicer than you let on."

"No, I'm not."

"You are to me."

"Well," he murmured, "you are somewhat biased."

"That's my line."

He watched her for a while, playing with spider-skein fine strands of hair, before speaking again. "The first time I ever took you to bed," he said, "and by bed, I of course mean stone bench in the middle of a museum, you were... silent."

"Well, it was pretty much all new to me," she replied. "Especially that feeling, like all your nerve endings are exploding at once, but in a good way, like… a not painful way."

"Did I strike you speechless?" he asked with a grin.

"I wouldn't give you the satisfaction."

"Ah, but you did then and many times since," he replied, and she pinched his side.

"Don't be crass. And it's very embarrassing to talk about this, for me."

"I think it rather sweet," he said, "without a mote of sarcasm, for once."

"I'll mark this moment down on the calendar, then. But honestly, it was like... Like I couldn't believe it was happening. My, admittedly scant, past experience wasn't exactly a raging success, was it? But with you, it was… shut up."

"I didn't say anything!"

"No, but you were about to." She kissed him. "It was a good night. I always thought… from past experience… it was supposed to be painful." She had never sounded so human, so easily broken, than in that moment.

It had been the kind of silence made up of noise; of the rustling of discarded clothes and knocking of limbs and sharp, soft intakes of breath. Now on an actual bed they recreated it seamlessly, bodies once foreign to each other now well-traversed territory. This tiny, broken little human somehow fitted perfectly to his form, as though they had been made for each other and not destined for different worlds. Everything she felt in that moment, every dart of pleasure, was echoed in his own body. He was gentle with her for once, too, and she with him (not that she could ever hurt him).

This was the stolen love of secret lovers, quiet and tender, old and new all at once, like it was the first time all over again, like it was the last time it might ever happen. They would never say aloud to each other that it was stolen, that they fought to keep each other; they were too proud. But they told each other with the lilting rhythm of their bodies instead, with fingers slipping on sweaty skin and muscles tautening against each other. It was no grand declaration, no thought-out gesture, but just another night, just another melding of forms, just another background murmur in the white noise of kisses and quips and arguments that made them them. Love was best conveyed without words; it was the kind of silence made up of noises.


	33. Chapter 33

"Good lord," Bobby said, entering Gwen's office just after Loki disappeared from the end of a blazing (although essentially quite light-hearted, as they usually were) row, "sex with that man must be insane."

"Two dominants each trying to prove they're more indifferent than the other," Gwen replied, not looking away from her computer screen as she struggled to navigate the internet. "And neither of them succeeding. Lots of hair pulling."

"I didn't actually want to know," Bobby replied, flinging herself into a chair.

"Well, now you do. How do I get the list of all the places I've visited up?"

Bobby raised an eyebrow. "What, maps?"

"No!" Gwen clicked her fingers irritably and jabbed one at the screen. "On _here_."

"Oh, your history. Press the settings button."

"Right, thanks."

"We can always enrol you on a silver surfers course, y'know," the deputy said cheerfully.

"Still the same age as you, Bob."

"Only in body. Don't you have a meeting to go to?"

" _Shit_!" she switched off the computer, grabbed Algernon and her coat and flew out of the room. There was a sleek black car waiting for her outside the Burrow; she dived in through the open window onto the back seat and tried to brush her hair with her fingers as they drove towards the old warehouse. "Are we gonna be late?"

"No, ma'am."

"Oh, thank the Allfather." _Did I really just say that?_ She thought with a frown. _Maybe I spend too much time around Loki_.

They pulled up and Gwen grabbed Algernon out of the cupholder before striding confidently into the warehouse, followed by her security man who had been sat in the front passenger seat. The meeting hadn't yet started; she sat down next to Ben, who looked worried.

"What's up with you?" she asked, as Algernon curled up in her breast pocket.

"Huh?" he said, and grimaced. "Oh, nothing."

"It's because I told the big man to suck my dick, isn't it?" she asked, resigned to her fate.

"Well, yeah. Kinda," Ben sighed, and stared off into the middle distance with a gloomy expression and his chin in his hand.

"Oh," Gwen huffed, "thanks for your concern. No, really, it's touching to know I matter to you after years of us knowing each other, and what's more, that you spare me no details. You're the best, Ben. Really."

His eyes flicked towards her. "Huh?"

She flung her hands up in the air. "I give up!" she exclaimed.

"What with?"

" _Men_!"

"Okay people," Martoni's vice Svechota announced as his superior took his seat at the head of the table. "Let's get to business."

The only really big news was the ever-growing threat of some information broker-slash-hacker woman called Athena, but since all of the Rats' business was offline Gwen wasn't that bothered about that- it seemed there were advantages to having the technological prowess of an eighty-year-old. Apart from that, everything passed by without serious issue and for once she kept her mouth shut, and it appeared Martoni had forgiven her previous indiscretion. Indiscretions. She tended to mouth off a lot.

As it drew to a close she stood up with everyone else, made it two steps to the exit, and heard someone calling her name.

"Mouse!"

"Bollocks," she muttered, and turned around. "Mr Svechota, sir? Is there a problem?"

"I think you know there is, babe. Boss wants to talk to you."

"Call me babe again and I'll make you a eunuch," she said under her breath. "Lead the way, then."

Martoni was waiting in a small side room, smoking two cigarettes at once. "Mouse," he smiled like an intimidating grandpa, "please, sit down."

She dropped into a rickety plastic chair and drummed her heel repeatedly into the floor, then stopped as she realised she was displaying a nervous tic. "Is there a problem, boss?"

His smile didn't drop. "Did you bring your little friend?"

"Wha- oh, yeah." She removed Algernon out of her pocket and reluctantly deposited him into Martoni's outstretched hand. _Don't hurt him don't hurt him for the love of god don't hurt him_ -

"It's a sweet little thing, isn't it? Has it got a name?" he asked, stroking the top of his head with his thumb.

"Algernon, sir."

"How fitting. After the book, I presume?"

She nodded, not trusting her voice to keep steady.

There was a half-eaten meal on Martoni's desk, from which he picked up a grain of cheese and held it out on the pad of his finger. Algernon sniffed at it cautiously, before devouring the crumb in one. "Sweet," Martoni said again, and set him down carefully. Gwen exhaled. "You know why you're here, of course."

She nodded. "My big mouth."

"I know you grew up on the streets, girl, and I know you think hierarchy is beneath you." His smile dropped as he leaned forward. "But that does not mean you get to cheek me, kid, or I will take everyone you love and kill them slowly, painfully, and make you watch. I will start with the innocent ones and work my way through everything you have left until you are alone, and broken, and then I will leave you alive without a hand left to help you. Do I make myself clear?"

She gulped. "Yes, boss. Sorry, boss." _And now I sound like James. Wonderful._

"Good. Now get out of my sight."

She grabbed Algernon and ran, through the now-empty warehouse and back to the car that was waiting. "He'll start with James," she said under her breath, "I need to get him out of the city. Why didn't it occur to me that I might get other people in trouble instead of myself?"

For as long as it was worth remembering, Gwen had been completely self-sufficient; she could rely only on herself, and nobody else relied on her. But it was different now, she had responsibilities, a _family_ , which meant she should really start thinking before talking.

"I'm up to my neck in it this time, Algernon," she said weakly, "it was so much easier when it was just you and me." But something felt wrong, in addition to the obvious problem. Why was the furry little ball in her hand so still?

She thought back to the food Martoni had given her pet, the warning that had followed it. How the boss wasn't a fan of empty threats.

" _Algernon_!"


	34. Chapter 34

"I wouldn't go in there if I were you," said Bobby through a mouthful of apple.

Loki's hand paused over the handle of the door to Gwen's office, behind which he could hear the sounds of things being broken. "Don't tell me what to do," he said, and then, "why not?"

A particularly loud crash shook the floor, accompanied by furious screaming. Bobby raised an eyebrow at him.

"She came back from her meeting like that, been doing it ever since. It's been hours now, the only person she's talked to was James and the bastard didn't even tell me what was going on." She took another bite, reducing it to the core, which she then shoved into her mouth and all.

"Where is James?"

"Dunno, said he had an errand to run."

Loki looked back at the door. "I should calm her down," he mused aloud, and Bobby shrugged.

"Rather you than me," she said, spitting a pip into the bin and moving towards the exit.

"Thank you for your support, quim."

"You are very welcome, prick."

He smirked and opened the door, then ducked as a chair went flying at his head.

"GET OUT!"

"No," he said evenly, "what happened?"

The office was a wreck. The desk had been flipped over and its contents were scattered across the floor, papers mingled with pickpocketed trinkets and a smashed computer screen. The books had been pulled from their shelves and the pages torn out- she must be upset, then, to have done that. "None of your business," Gwen snarled, who herself looked a complete wreck.

"I'm not leaving until you tell me," he said, and with a frustrated shriek she went back to breaking things. "Mouse-"

" _Don't_! Don't call me that!"

"Why not?"

"Because-" her anger seemed to evaporate as she pressed her hand to her mouth to muffle a sob. "Oh, god," she whispered, her voice barely audible, "Algernon. The bastard killed Algernon." She screamed a nasty, guttural scream as tears began to pull her make-up down her face, and punched a frame on the wall, its glass shattering and tearing the skin on her knuckles.

Loki's first thought was merely, _is that it?_ But he pushed it down and crossed the room to where Gwen was standing, staring at the blood now dripping from her hand. "Oh, sweetheart," he said, and she embraced him as she broke down completely.

"Why?" she sobbed into his shoulder. "Why do I lose everything I love? What the fuck is wrong with me, Loki?"

%

Once she had calmed down, he clumsily cleaned and bandaged her hand as she sat on her kitchen side, still sniffling occasionally. "There's nothing wrong with you," he said at last, and she snorted humourlessly.

"Really? Puny Midgardian like me is completely flawless?"

"Fine," Loki said, "in these specific circumstances, there is nothing wrong with you."

"There's the man I know and love." She caught his hand and pulled it into her lap, weaving her fingers through his. "You must think I'm so dumb."

"Of course not."

She looked up at him. "Look me in the eye, Lejemand, and tell me your first thought was not along the lines of 'what an overreaction'."

"I - fine. But if it makes you feel any better, my second thought was much more sympathetic."

"It doesn't, but at least your conscience is clear." She ran a thumb across the vein on the back of his palm. "It's just… that mouse was everything I had, for years of my life. And Martoni killed him just to, to, to prove a point." She practically spat out the last words.

"So what are you going to do?" he asked her.

There was a fire burning in her nearly-black eyes. "Make him pay. I said it would take something more for me to take him out, and here it is."

"Oh, so this is a revenge story, now? That seems healthy."

"Please, you trying to take over Earth was _totally_ you attempting to get back at your brother."

"Don't be ridiculous." She kicked him gently. "In all seriousness, Gwen, you can use your rage. Let it consume you."

"Oh," she said, "I am. The son of a bitch is going to die screaming."

His lip twisted. "You can be a little scary at times."

"I try my best. Thanks for patching me up."

"It's what I'm here for. Rule Asgard, and clean your wounds whenever you inevitably get yourself into trouble. Would you like me to stay?" he asked, tucking her hair back behind her ears.

"Nah, I've got work to do. A _lot_ of work to do. I need to figure out who else is willing to mutiny, his security plans, who I might need to bribe…"

"It's really rather attractive when you talk about killing someone."

"Cheers. That's why I do it, actually. To turn you on. Because the whole world does, in fact, revolve around you."

"I always felt it did." He kissed her, tasting the last traces of salty tears on her lips. "Good luck."

"I don't need it."

"That's my girl."

%

 _One Week Later_

"Claire, you got the word on his mistress?"

"Watertight, no symp."

"Great, so we don't have to worry about her." Loki watched from a shadowy corner as Gwen spun around in the centre of the room, the walls of which were covered from floor to ceiling in maps, lists, notes and skeins of red silk, linking it all together. "Allie, Svechota. Hit me."

"Uh, probably your main rival. Word is he's already made one mutiny attempt when Martoni first got the big seat, and it's only 'cuz of his silver tongue that he's still alive, the slimy git."

"Slimy git, noted. Posh boy!"

"Hm?"

"You're good at talking your way out of shit," she said, in what he thought was an unnecessarily accusatory tone, "any idea on how to shut this guy up?"

"Cut out his tongue?" he suggested, and she gave him a scathing look. "Fine. Confuse him to the point that he's lost for words."

"Thank you for your surprisingly constructive suggestion. Bobby!"

"Yo."

"Chaffeur intel, hit me. _Ow!_ Not literally, asshat!"

"But it was too good an opportunity to pass up."

"Just tell me about his damn driver," Gwen sighed.

The woman was in her element- Loki couldn't pair the skinny little urchin he had first met to the person standing in front of him now. She moved with confidence and complete self-assertion, no longer needing to be out of sight- it was a Gwen that, before now, he felt that only he had known. He actually felt a little jealous that now he had to share her. She dismissed the Rats half an hour later and walked up to him when they were alone, slipping her hands beneath his shirt and smiling crookedly at him.

"I'm going to send his sorry arse to hell," she said in a sultry voice, and he laughed. "How do you feel about a harmless bit of tagging? Just being a gargoyle, no stalking or owt."

"I understood about half of that," he replied as her fingers crept further up his torso. "And, although I can easily think of things I'd rather we do with our time, I'd be delighted. To whom do we owe the pleasure?"

"One of Martoni's privates, not affiliated with the rest of the mob so much," she explained, shifting her hands round to his back and tracing the lines of his shoulderblades, "lives in a big fancy apartment up in Manhattan, got a communal area on the penthouse floor."

"I would imagine," he said slowly, his hands doing some wandering of their own, "one would need a key to get into the building in the first."

"You got a good imagination," she grinned, and removed one hand to get something from her back pocket, before pulling out a flimsy bit of plastic and waving it in the air with a very smug expression. "Key card. Skivved it off his girl, _she_ won't be getting laid anytime soon."

"Such charming dialect," he murmured as she stepped away.

"You should change your face and shit, put on a swanky suit. I'm gonna get changed, meet me at the end of the road in twenty minutes."

"I can cast a glamour over you," he offered, but she shook her head.

"Too risky- what if we get separated?" She gave him a fleeting kiss before disappearing through a door that led to her room.

 _Madwoman_ , he thought appreciatively, and adjusted the form he wore in front of the Rats to one that felt a little more sophisticated, with a sharp black suit to match.

Fifteen minutes later, he was fiddling with his gold cufflinks when a pretty, long-haired brunette in a dress approached him.

"Afternoon, posh boy," she said brightly, and Loki recognised his lover beneath what he could have sworn was another woman's face.

"Impressive," he said, "you look normal."

"Contouring's a wonderful thing, innit? Are you aware your glamour looks like Paul Newman?"

"Who?"

"That one film I made you watch. The one with the eggs."

He glanced at his reflection in a window and a long-nosed, blue-eyed man with a lazy smile looked back at him. "You approve, then."

"Oh, yeah." She linked her arm through his, slipped on a pair of sunglasses and together they wandered through the New York streets in what appeared to be an aimless fashion. "So, what does Thor make of all the Avengers breaking up like a late nineties boyband?"

"Why don't you ask me what _I_ think of it?" he asked, mock-offended.

"Because you don't care."

"Ah, right. Excellent point. Well, he grieves for his friends, of course, but Asgard has her own troubles."

"And how are _you_ dealing with them, oh king my king?"

"Magnificently," he replied with a sly smile. "It's a notable coincidence that the internal fissure of your false idols should be reflected in the Midgardian underworld's political structure, too."

"Only a city's worth of underworld," she countered, "please don't compare me to the Avengers. They're a symbol of the power of private companies in the world and I don't like it."

"You are very odd, sweetheart."

"I know. You can call me mouse again, by the way. I'm over the initial stages of grief."

"Thank Yggdrasil for that," he muttered, and flinched as somebody brushed past them. "Gwen, a mortal just _touched_ me."

"Oh, diddums," she sighed, pulling a twenty dollar bill out of her purse and handing it to a homeless person as they walked past them. "I can't imagine how terrible that must be for you. D'you need a shower, now?"

"I need to burn my skin off," he retorted, "and, as a frost giant, that is saying something."

"Hey, remember when we first met and I nicked your wallet? How dirty did you feel after that?"

"I was too busy being utterly bemused," he said, "and, as you continued to do it over time, infuriated… then infatuated…"

"Ooh, tell me more."

"I think you already have the gist of it."

They continued like this, their strange mix of bickering and flirting holding the conversation, until they approached one of the uglier steel-and-glass towers. Gwen swiped the key card at a small box mounted next to the door, thus causing it to open. Since the building was too tall for stairs to be conceivable for her tiny legs, he was reluctantly dragged into a mirror-panelled lift with terrible music playing faintly from an invisible source. At least the view was pleasant.

"Y'know," Gwen said, "people always make out in lifts like this. They do it in movies all the time."

He looked at her.

Five minutes later the doors slid open again and Loki rebuttoned his waistcoat as they stepped out onto the top floor of the building, which featured massive windows displaying what would have been a stunning view if it hadn't been Midgard. There were a few low-slung white sofas in the centre of the floor with a couple of other people milling around on them, and that was where they were to sit for the next three hours as Gwen watched and waited for things she refused to divulge to her partner.

"I'm bored," Loki said after ten minutes.

"Poor poppet," Gwen replied as she turned a page of a magazine, and this conversation was repeated in similar forms at regular intervals. A couple of times her hand would drift to her jacket pocket, as though to check something was still there, but it always dropped back into her lap before it reached it. After a couple of hours of completely pointless sitting Loki was about ready to murder someone when an apartment door opened and Gwen's eyes widened.

"Don't," he warned her, as a young couple emerged, but it was too late- she had hurried over to introduce herself to them and, more importantly, the baby imprisoned in the contraption the mother was pushing along. He glared at the back of her head and glared at the father who tried to wave at him and glared at the ugly child in the wheeled prison for ten whole minutes until Gwen released the couple and came to sit back down next to him.

"Enjoy yourself?" he asked moodily, and she rolled her eyes.

"It was a cute baby, okay?"

"No. What about the reason we came here in the first place?"

" _Well_ ," said Gwen smugly, cracking her knuckles, "that lovely couple is the sister, brother-in-law and niece of the private hire we're tagging. A family which I'm pretty sure nobody else in the state knows about, which means-"

"We can use them as blackmail," he finished for her, talking under his breath so they wouldn't be heard.

" _I_ can use them as blackmail," she corrected him, "I sneaked some photos with a secret camera one of the Rats got for me. But yeah, that's about it."

"Did you know they would come?" he asked.

"I had my suspicions. Not many gang boys live in places as legit as this, so he must've had a reason for choosing the apartment. I was ready to bet that reason was the fool someone he knew well into thinking he was a good guy." She stood up. "We can go, now."

"I've been waiting for you to say that."


	35. Chapter 35

Chez Martoni was a large manor in upstate New York, ironically close to the Avengers HQ; it was beautiful, elegant, understated in a way that still clearly showed its owner's immense wealth. Wealth that, though hard-earned, could be spent on much better things than Ming Dynasty vases and mistresses' shoes.

Martoni himself sat in his study while his pianist did what she did best, scribbling away on an important-looking document with a furrowed, aging brow. He finished the document off with a flourished signature, sighed, and leaned back in his ornate chair.

"You can leave us now, Maria," he said to the pianist, "I'm sure she's already paid you to make yourself scarce. Or was it blackmail?"

The elegant music stopped as Maria stood up. "I am sorry, sir, but she…"

"It doesn't matter, my darling," he said quietly, "not in the grand scheme of things. Good night, my darling."

"Good night, Mr Martoni." As Maria left, Gwen stepped forward out of the shadows. She had dressed appropriately for such an important occasion, out of her ripped punk clothes and into a fitted women's tux, her candyfloss hair swept back from her face.

"You knew?" she asked, not a trace of emotion betraying her.

Martoni didn't answer. "Please," he said, "have a seat. There's one last bottle of champagne I would like to finish."

She hesitated, and walked forward to sit opposite him. Martoni levered the cork out of a dusty bottle and poured it into two champagne flutes before passing one to her, which she accepted with a nod of thanks.

"I'm impressed," he said, "nobody else got this far. Finnegal, Guercio, they're both decomposing right now since they thought they could reach me, as you have."

"This was an audition," Gwen guessed, "I thought you were deliberately pissing me off. You wanted to see which of the circle were good enough."

"You're a smart woman, Mouse." He swilled the drink reflectively. "I'm glad it's you."

"You're dying. You're dying and you're looking for a successor."

"Game, set and match, as they say. This," he told her, sliding it across the table, "is a sort of will, except the estate and position in question is somewhat figurative. My solicitor helped me work it up- he's a wonderful man, I recommend him absolutely- and it leaves all my authority to you. None of the others will question it."

She narrowed her eyes. "The gangland isn't your _possession_. It's the home of every person who gets shunned by the clean people, and it's not yours to claim."

"Humour a dying man," he said drily, and she relented. "Brain tumour, of all things. Right here." He tapped his forehead. "I have a few weeks to spend with family, and then… kaput."

"Who else knew?" she asked.

"Your friend Ben, of course." That explained why he looked so miserable; Ben came from the same branch of Italian mafia as Martoni. "He'll help you learn the ropes, should you need it. I think he's looking for a quiet life now, actually. Perhaps your administrator. And I suspect Svechota, who was hot on your heels. Slippery little bastard- it was his idea. To kill your little pet, I mean. I would rather the poor thing stayed uninvolved, but it was that or get on his bad side."

"Algernon," Gwen murmured, "his name was Algernon."

"Yes. Well, if you want to sign it, I would like to go and see my son." Martoni's eyes glazed over. "It's been a long time…"

Gwen had little to no experience of legal jargon, but she was smart enough to understand the contract and after a few rereads, she was certain it was watertight and signed it with an "X", in lieu of her real name (in it, she was referred to only as "the person known as Mouse"). Once she had done, she and Martoni clinked glasses and toasted a job well done. He closed his eyes for a moment and sighed as he inhaled the aroma of the alcohol.

"1876 chardonnay," Martoni told her, taking a sip. "Or so I'm told."

"Fancy."

He nodded. "I met the Krays once, you know. I was only a child, my father had business with them in London. That was back in the silver age of organised crime, when we were still pretending everything gangster was decadent. Devaney, the Luchesses, Lansky… wonderful man, Lansky. True mastermind." Martoni cleared his throat with a great hacking cough before continuing. "These days, people like everything to be squeaky clean. No room for men who make their money in the shadows- and women for that matter, ha ha. We may as well just be street rats, to them." He coughed again. "Excuse me."

Gwen smiled widely- a true trickster's grin, with a silver gleam and wicked eyes, a grin that served only to show more of the skull. "It's fine," she said, "everything's fine. Y'know, as much as I've learned from being in the circle, there are some things you can only know how to do by being a street rat. Like having fast hands," she continued as Martoni began to splutter, "fast enough to pick a tag's pocket. Fast enough to spike someone's drink."

"You-"

"I reckon I would've taken your offer without doing this," she said, picking at her nails, "if it hadn't been for you killing my god damn mouse, the only family I got left, to make a fucking point. But now, I'll just have to return the favour to you. Shame you'll never get to see that kid of yours, boss. I know how much it hurts to be apart from them."

He drew in a great, rattling breath so he could get a full sentence out. "But it was Svechota's idea," he heaved, and she nodded.

"Oh, I know. And he's gonna pay for it too, don't you worry. But I will not be handed this on a silver plate, sir. I started off this mutiny planning to fight tooth and nail and by the gods, I will finish it like that too. Goodnight, Don Martoni."

He managed to nod as he clawed at his neck, the poison burning him from the inside out. "You're smarter… than you look…"

"Cheers." She downed her champagne in one, and grimaced. "It's kind of bitter, actually."

He laughed, a laugh that brought up blood. "I chose… the right man for the job, then… or woman, ha ha…" he slumped forward, rattling the few expensive ornaments on his desk, and Martoni was no more. Gwen picked up a little porcelain bird, gave it an appreciative look and tucked it into her back pocket as she walked away.

%

Svechota got two whole steps into his dirty apartment before Gwen shot him in the knee.

He howled and fell to the floor but before he could collapse forward the toe of her boot caught him under the chin and his neck snapped backwards with a gurgle.

"You - filthy - bastard!" she snarled, each word accompanied by a kick to his midriff. She stepped back and took in the whimpering man on the floor, blood pouring from his shattered knee.

"I'm wondering whether I should let you live," she said, breathing heavily. "Not that you deserve to, o'course, but it'll draw out your suffering. You know how Henry VIII died? A riding injury that shattered his hip, and the doctors weren't very good back then. So instead of cleaning up the wound they left shards of bone in him, which slowly travelled through his body and caused infection as well as tearing up all his flesh. It was a horrible, nasty, drawn out death." She crouched down next to him, grabbed his face and tilted it up to look at her. "Wouldn't you enjoy that?"

He whimpered.

"Sorry? Didn't quite catch what you said, there. Through all the crying."

"No..."

"Good, good." She stood up and wiped her hands on her trousers. "No, my man, I ain't gonna kill you. Get up."

He shook his head, face screwed up in pain, and flinched as she pointed her gun at his other knee.

"I said, get up."

This time, he dragged himself onto one foot, tears streaming down his wan face. "Please," he whispered, "please..."

"No," Gwen repeated "I won't kill you." She nodded to the figure stood in semi-darkness behind him. "But he will."

Svechota spun round as Loki laid a hand on his shoulder. "But you- you're dead," he spluttered, "oh fuck, you're dead- _WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING_?"

"Deus ex machina," Loki said with a smile, took Svechota's head and snapped it to the side. The former vice's body dropped to the floor like the dead weight that it was.

"Very witty," Gwen commented.

"I try my best. He was awfully surprised to see me. Is it really that infeasible that I'm still alive?" he asked. "I am a god."

"Yeah, and don't push it with that obvious superiority bullshit or Thor might cotton in his daddy's not his daddy."

"Did one of your monarchs really die in such a way?" He asked, as she tucked the gun into the waistband of her jeans and accompanied him out of the apartment, safe in the knowledge nobody knew nor cared enough to investigate his death, especially since she had men coming round to clean up after her.

"Yeah, and that wasn't even the worst. Charles II died of syphilis," she told him, "had too much sex and rotted from the inside out."

"We don't have that on Asgard."

"I should hope not. Thanks for doing the neck thing, by the way. I just don't have the muscle for that kinda stuff."

"Mice," said Loki, "all their power lies in their bite. Which is significantly more painful than one expects."

"As you know from experience."

"Indeed."

 **A/N "deus ex machina" forming the third and final part of the triumvirate of Badass Civilian Chronicles Lines, along with "you're god damn right you should be scared of me" and "you shot the wrong gardener, bitch."**


	36. Chapter 36

Loki found Gwen in her office, leaning out of the window and lighting a slim cylinder she held between her lips which stank of rat poison, tar and, for some strange reason, almonds. She struck a match against the pane and lit it, inhaling the smoke it created with a slightly guilty expression.

"I'm stressed," she said defensively, "it was either this or black tar heroin. There's a lot more paperwork involved than I thought there would be."

There was a mug of tea on her desk; Loki pressed his fingers to it and felt it was full, lukewarm and completely ignored. "Are you _complaining_?"

"No. Yes. Well…" she stubbed out the cigarette with a scowl, but the smell still lingered. "It's amazing, to have this much power, it's wonderful. But there's so much, like, admin stuff that comes with it, so much more than there is with the Rats and I thought _that_ was a lot. And I can't become some… some bureaucrat!"

"You can ask for help," he pointed out.

"No I _can't_! I'm the first woman ever to have complete control of NY's gangland, and I don't even come from a crime family. I can't show weakness, Loki, or they'll rip me to shreds."

"They don't have to know."

She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. "Huh."

"It worked for me," Loki continued, and her eyebrows furrowed in concentration.

"Huh," she said again, and her lips stretched into a smile. "Ben always said he wanted an early retirement."

"And a false Allfather as your advisor," he added, joining her at the window. "How blessed it is that you are."

"Blessed isn't the word I'd use. In other news, I've started mothering James as a replacement for Algernon. It's awful, Loki. He's a foot taller than me."

He laughed as he imagined Gwen fussing over the boy. "Rather him than me."

"Yeah, yeah. It's worrying, though, 'cause if I get too attached then something awful'll probably happen to him like it does everyone else I know." Her tone was lighthearted, but she seemed unable to look at him as she said it. "I don't wanna curse him."

"Mouse," he said, "you're not cursed."

"Sure I'm not," she said quietly, still looking down. "That's the only explanation for me losing everyone and everything."

He pressed a finger under her chin and tilted her head up so she was facing him. "You still have me," he said, "I don't plan on leaving you anytime soon. Me, and your empire."

There was sadness in her beady eyes. "Do you ever get lonely?" she asked him, "that big throne and nobody knows you're on it."

"Cease with the melancholy, woman. It doesn't suit you."

"Sorry, I just… I'm tired," she confessed, moving towards him and pressing her forehead into his chest. "And when you're not here, I- I get lonely. Which is stupid, because I'm fucking surrounded by people all the time. Like seriously, I never get a moment's peace."

"Mouse," he said, "I will not pity you, or tell you that you are allowed to grieve, or wallow in misery. Because you cannot _afford_ to. You have a responsibility to the people under you."

"They're not under me," she mumbled, "everyone's equal."

"Hush. You cannot fail them, Gwen. Don't become so wrapped up in yourself you forget about the people you are supposed to protect."

She glanced up at him. "Why do I feel like you're speaking from experience?"

"I told you to be quiet." He kissed her lightly.

"You make a surprisingly good king, Lejemand."

"I am aware. I cannot stay, I'm afraid. We're in the middle of a witch hunt."

"Oh?" she put her hands on his shoulders. "Tell me more."

"A clan from Alfheim, the people my mother originated from and not a particularly pleasant subset of society. Prone to excessive sacrifice."

"And you're not?"

"Not unless it's necessary, and certainly not to prove piety. They believe that by giving children to the fairytale goddess they worship, their own powers will strengthen. Which is, of course, ridiculous."

"They… they kill kids?"

"They lure them in with one of their own and yes, they burn them alive."

He could practically feel the anger bubbling up inside of her. "What'll happen to them if you catch 'em?"

" _When_ we catch them, and for such a crime it's capital punishment."

"Good." Her little hands had balled into fists, scrunching up his tunic. "Make sure it hurts."

"There's my little murderer." He pressed his lips to her forehead. "I know it's a struggle to rely on others, especially when the vast majority of them are useless, but occasionally it's the right thing to do. Oh, and Gwen?"

"Loki?"

"Congratulations."

She smiled crookedly, walked back to her desk and picked up the mug, swilling it reflectively. "Guess that means I'm kind of your equal now."

"No," he said flatly, and narrowed his eyes at the suddenly much-stronger almonds scent. "Can you smell that?"

"Smell what?" she asked, raising the mug to her lips, and Loki put two and two together.

" _Don't drink that_!" he commanded her and she flinched, setting the mug back down on the table as she jumped backwards.

"Jesus Christ, posh boy, it weren't that cold!"

"No- give it here," he said tersely, and when she didn't respond except to glare at him suspiciously he grabbed the mug himself and sniffed it. "Cyanide," he said shortly.

"Huh?"

"Somebody's laced your drink with cyanide."

Their eyes met; a mix of trepidation and anger in both. "Who the _fuck's_ trying to kill me already?" Gwen exclaimed. "I've only been in charge a week!"

 **A/N I can't believe we're at the end of 2016 already. It felt like the Olympics only finished in London last week. In other news this fic is technically complete (except for one part where instead of writing half of a chapter I've left a note to future me saying "write this". Thanks, past me) and** ** _hopefully_** **it will be fully uploaded by the time Ragnarok comes out, if not close to it. I also want to do some kind of sequel revolving around the events of the film and what comes after it, but that depends on how the film itself turns out. Either way, I'll let you know what I know as soon as I know. Happy holidays!**


	37. Chapter 37

It was a quiet night in the burrow. Rats were either out or asleep, blissfully unaware of the attempted hit that had been taken out on their boss. Well, all bar one of them, anyway.

It could only have been a Rat – who else would have access to her tea? James, of course, but one look at his face told anyone that he had probably never nicked so much as a chocolate bar and a copy of _Playboy_ from the corner shop, let alone tried to kill somebody. No, by dint of Occam's razor Gwen had known it was a Rat. And the thing about her girls was that they were so busy spying on other people they always forgot that she was watching _them,_ and she was the best out of all of them.

There were so many Rats now that they had had to expand into buildings across the city, and even here in the burrow they were two to a room. But half of this particular room's occupants were out working, meaning Gwen could head straight for the occupied bed without hesitating. It was a good thing too, because she had been holding in her wrath for so long that even a second's pause could result in a misfire. Now, though, she was sure.

Without bothering to announce herself, Gwen reached down and grabbed a handful of hair. The bed's occupant shrieked in shock and pain as she was dragged onto the floor by her scalp and Gwen, with a surprising amount of strength from someone so small and battered, hauled her out of the room.

"Mouse!" she yelped, "Mouse, I didn't, it wasn't me –"

Gwen said nothing as she pulled her up the stairs out of the basement, just stared straight ahead of her. The commotion had brought other girls out of their rooms and they stared as the Rat was drawn past them. Gwen could hear the whispers, and although she couldn't make out the words she knew what they were saying. She wasn't surprised when they followed them, either. People liked a show, which was why she hadn't just killed the girl in her bed.

One of her security muscle opened the front door for her and Gwen yanked the Rat out into the street. She kicked her off of the kerb and into the road, then planted her foot on the girl's back and held out a hand. The muscle threw her a sawn-off shotgun, which she caught without looking and pressed into the nape of the girl's neck.

"Go on," she snarled, "beg."

"You can't," the Rat sobbed, "you can't, not in the street, not in front of anyone! You'll get arrested!"

Gwen dropped onto her knees. "In _my_ city?" she hissed. "I can do whatever the hell I want. Roll over, _now._ Let me see your face." She stood up, allowing the girl to move. Her face was caked in snot and tears and gravel from the road, and she held her hands up in front of her. "Tell me your name."

"P-please, Mouse, I never –"

" _Tell me your fucking name!"_

"Annie! Oh, god! Please! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry, don't kill me, they made me!"

"Who?"

"Sharaan!"

Momentarily and to the surprise of everyone present, Gwen's anger momentarily vanished. "What," she said, "really? Little man, big forehead, sweats too much?"

"Yes! He said it wasn't right for the mob's biggest kingpin to be someone like you! He said you didn't deserve it!"

Mouse heaved a sigh. "I'm too busy for this," she said, and turn to her muscle. "Sharaan's got kids. Send a message, will you? Make it clear I don't tolerate insubordination. Feel free to use your imagination."

"Yes, ma'am."

Gwen turned back to Annie. "Why?" she asked, gun still trained at her face. Oh, there would be such a mess to clean up soon. "What did he have over you?"

"He got me back on the smack," Annie wailed, "and you don't let junkies in when they're still high and I didn't have anywhere else to go and nobody else would dare deal to a Rat because they're too scared of what'll happen and he was the only person I could get stuff to shoot up with."

Gwen pursed her lips and looked up. "Clear off," she told the crowd. The Rats vanished, and the people who had just happened to be on the street at the time were ushered away by her security until the entire road was deserted. It took a hell of a lot to do _that_ in Brooklyn. Gwen looked up and checked that all the windows were dark before pulling the trigger on the shotgun.

It is a common misconception that guns go bang. The truth is that, especially in open air, the air around them shatters with a resounding _crack,_ shards of sound piercing right to the very bone. That crack would have been enough in itself to merit the police coming round, so they had to be fast.

"I hope you've learned your lesson," she told Annie, throwing the gun aside.

The girl didn't move.

"Oh, come on. It was a blank, kid. Get up. I haven't got all night."

Annie opened her eyes, which had been squeezed tightly shut, and stared at Gwen. "You –" she began, and lapsed into silence.

"Yeah, yeah." Gwen extended a hand and hauled Annie to her feet. "What do you think I am, an idiot? There's always witnesses. I was gonna make a show like this so word would get around and then take you out somewhere quiet. The cops'd be so confused by it all I wouldn't even need to pay them off."

"You're still gonna –"

"No," said Gwen heavily, "I changed my mind. Bloody empathy. Smack, was it you said?"

"Yeah."

"Nasty stuff," Gwen said, scratching her forearm unconsciously, right where the needle tracks were. She had had to beat the addiction herself, alone, sheltering in doorways and under bridges while selling the damn stuff to get by. It hadn't been easy. Now, she had friends in high and low places. "I know a rehab clinic in New Jersey. Here's the deal – you're not Annie anymore. You don't take any of your stuff with you. If anyone asks, stick to the story we come up with. And if you ever set one foot in this city again, I _will_ kill you. Deal?"

"Oh, god," Annie said, falling to her knees and wrapping her arms around Gwen's own legs, "thank you, thank you so much…"

"Get off," Gwen said irritably, kicking the girl away from her. "Before I change my mind. This is against my better judgement, kid. I hope you know that." She put two fingers in her mouth and whistled, which called a couple of her guards to her. "Get her to the papers man, tell him she's for Aiaian House. She'll try and run, so tie her up. She's a junkie, you can't trust 'em. Quick, before the fuzz come sniffing."

They took Annie and disappeared with her. Gwen walked back inside and up to her little kitchen, where a wan-faced James was waiting.

"Have you been crying?" Gwen asked, taking in his reddened eyes as she switched on the kettle. "Oh, James."

"I was watching from the roof, miss," he said in a trembling voice, "you –"

"Blew her brains all the way into next week," Gwen said firmly, cutting across him. Then she winked. "The mob's a nasty business, James. You need to learn to look the other way."

"I do, miss." He edged closer to her. "Why'd you let her live?" he whispered, as she pulled two mugs out of the cupboard.

"Because I believe in second chances," Gwen replied. "I'm actually very charitable like that."

"Yes, miss."

She chuckled. "Aiaian House is a lovely place," she said, "I helped fund it, actually. Maybe we can pay a visit, sometime."

"I'd like that very much, miss."

"I thought you would."

 **A/N okay, so I'm actually, like, really proud of this chapter (which is impressive considering how much I hate 99% of what I write). The first draft of it was basically the complete opposite - Annie died and Gwen was really upset, as opposed to Annie living and Gwen being mildly disgruntled. I like it better this way, because instead of seeming soft but actually being responsible for her death, Gwen spares a life and tries to maintain this heartless exterior. Anyway. Words.**


	38. Chapter 38

Hot, happy and very drunk, Loki wore the face of Odin still as he tried to remain upright, staggering a little in his walk towards his chambers. He dismissed the handmaidens with a wave of his hand, shed the glamour and stripped his tight leather robes from his body before falling face first onto his bed and giggling a bit.

He had a lot of things to say about the Allfather, but one of the more pleasant ones was that he could hold his drink a lot better than Loki could.

He struggled to pull a sheet up over him, dragged his head up in the general direction of the pillow and closed his eyes, partly in an attempt to fall asleep but mostly just to stop the room spinning. Loki always slept better after alcohol with a bedmate, he mused vaguely, it was a shame his was a realm away… he could do with someone to…

"Lejemand."

His eyes snapped open and he jerked awake, then spun over so he was propped up on his elbows. "Mouse?" he called out with his eyes narrowed.

"You said you were lonely, didn't you?" a thrillingly familiar voice whispered in his ear, and he felt her slender body press up against his back. Her lips were hot on the side of his neck- no cold piercing tonight, then- and he let out a soft moan. "I came to help."

"Let me see you," he demanded, and obediently the presence behind him vanished and Gwen appeared in front of him, lounging on the bed with a glittering smile. "You look…"

She was dressed in black satin, and her hair was long - it looked as though someone had drained the sky at dusk of its colour and braided it over her shoulder. Magnificently wrought Aesir jewellery clung to her neck and ears, and from what he could see in the gloom there was not a scar nor blemish on her body.

She looked _Asgardian._

Her smile was all-white, no silver. She leaned back as he crawled forward and straddled her, the cloth of her dress so fine he could see her heart hammering beneath it. Fine and easily torn, he discovered, ripping it from her body and running his fingers over her flawless china skin, her stomach smooth and flawless. The beads of her necklace danced across her chest when he pulled her closer and her hips bucked against his as, finally, he kissed her.

But it felt wrong. She was like putty in his hands, and Gwen was only ever iron. He opened his eyes after the kiss to see that she was staring over his shoulder, her own gaze glassy. "Mouse?" Her mouth opened a little, and a trickle of blood carved its way down her chin. " _Gwen!_ "

She shook like a ragdoll. Her body wasn't resisting because it was dead, or dying at least- he laid her down and saw the gaping red hole over where her heart should be, felt her blood on his own body. "No, no, no," he muttered, then leaped back in shock- she writhed up onto her back as a snake rose out of her, slick with gore, its tongue darting as it tasted the air and wound its way towards him-

He jerked awake with a yell, scrambled out of bed and tripped over the sheets, glancing over his shoulder to check it was empty before dragging himself to a drawer, yanking out the false base, pulling out a key, crossing to _another_ drawer, unlocking it and grabbing one of the familiar purple crystals he had stored inside it months ago.

He had barely managed to stand upright by the time the world reassumed itself in the shape of Gwen's Midgardian bedroom. He smashed the lamp as he attempted to turn it on, gave up and reached out for the arm extended over the mattress, grabbing it and yanking her towards him as he knelt at the side of the bed and did his best not to throw up.

" _Oi_!" She had pulled a knife, but dropped it as she saw who it was. He frisked her, checking to make sure her only wounds were old ones and pulling apart the shirt she slept in to make sure there were no reptiles trying to climb out of her. "What the hell're you doing?"

His hands moved to her face, brushing against her septum ring. "Talk to me," he said urgently, "say something- say something _you._ "

"But-"

"Now!"

"Jesus, fine!" She grabbed his wrists and dragged him down. "You ever heard of Cleopatra? Old Egyptian queen, she-"

That was Gwen enough for him; he clutched her to his chest and buried his face in her bony shoulder, relishing her familiar smell of city fumes and acrid sweetness mixed with that earthy Midgardian smell. "I love you," he mumbled. There was something else to her smell beneath all that, though: a warmth such as he had not felt since he was a child.

"I should expect so, but what happened?" she asked him, still sounding very sleepy as she stroked his hair in the exact same way Frigga used to. "You're drunk, ain't you? I can guess that much."

"Nothing," Loki said quickly. He released her. "Tell me about Cleopatra."

Gwen gave him a suspicious look with one eye as she rubbed the other with her hand to try and banish the tiredness from it. "Fine, but summat's definitely up with you. So she was the last queen of this millennia-old kingdom, right? And she had affairs with two of the most powerful men in the most powerful empire at the world at the time, Antony and Caesar. But what's cool is that she doesn't go back with them to Rome- the empire, that is- nah, she uses 'em as allies and makes sure that her sons inherit part of the Roman empire, and she doesn't… she never becomes _theirs_."

"Is this further reason for you not coming to Asgard with me, mouse?"

"Kinda. I mean- you can treat women as your trophy, or whatever, or you could actually view them as equals and let them have their own kingdoms, which means the pair of you effectively get two. So no, I'm never gonna be your _queen_ , posh boy. Besides, can you imagine if we had to put up with each other all the time? We'd both be dead within the month."

"Cleopatra," Loki asked, tracing patterns on her bare thigh with his thumb, "did she have a happy ending?"

"God, no. They all died- Caesar got stabbed by a load of politicians, and Antony and Cleopatra both killed themselves. Wossisname wrote a play about it. Shakespeare." She looked at him. "Can I carry on talking?"

"Please do."

"I… it gets easier," she said, her tone more serious now. "Death. In films and books and stuff, people always say dealing with it never gets easier, but it does- even killing, too. And it's scary, because- I dunno how to word it…"

"You're scared that you will find yourself slipping," Loki finished for her, "each kill requires just slightly less reason than the last, and one day you'll wake up and there will be blood on your hands for no reason at all."

"It's been a bad week. I almost killed one of my Rats for being just as weak as I used to be, and it was... scary. I don't want to become this, this _thing_ that doesn't feel anything."

"Would you rather the grief tore you apart like it has done before?" he asked her. "Like with Lucy, like with… with everything else?"

"No," she said, "of course not."

"You have to let it get easier, mouse, or the pain will drive you insane and the end result will be the same lack of conscience anyway. The numbness you feel, the walls you build inside yourself, you need them as armour to deal with the world, every time blood falls and it gets just a little more terrible. You need only learn when to shed the armour."

"You talk like you know from experience."

"I do. I reached the point where to kill was as easy as to breathe years ago, and I nearly burned your world to ash because of it. I wasn't there to stop my mother being slaughtered because of it… and yes, now I have what I always desired and more to boot, but I have more blood on my hands than was really required. Not to mention my family thinks I'm dead. _Again_."

"My heart bleeds," she teased him, and he flinched at the memory of the nightmare.

"Gwen," he said slowly, "you haven't had anything to do with snakes recently, have you?"

"Literally? No. Metaphorically and symbolically? Way too much. Feel like giving me some context?"

"It was a dream," he said, "just a dream." He took the lull in conversation to kiss her, far more gently than he did normally, savouring her thin, chapped lips.

"Hell of a dream, then. And I love you too, you weird drunk alien."

He laughed weakly. "Your rhetoric never ceases to amaze."

Her thumb brushed lightly against his temple; he wasn't used to anyone being so gentle with him, as though he was breakable, something that needed to be protected. He certainly had never expected to be treated in such a way by a mortal, but this was Gwen. She was the exception that proved the rule. His head had fallen downwards onto her shoulder again and her legs were resting lightly on either side of his waist - there was no ulterior motive here. The simple act of being held was enough.


	39. Chapter 39

Half a dozen Rats were sat on every available surface in the tiny upstairs kitchen while James cooked, talking loud, coarse and vulgar. "Where's Mouse?" Loki asked Bobby without actually entering the room.

"Downstairs - hence why we all got booted up here. I wouldn't recommend going down there," she added as she crunched on a slice of the pepper James was slicing, "it's gotta be dead silent, or something. One of the girls slammed a door last night and now she's in fear of her life."

"Why?"

"Because Mouse is terrifying."

"No, why must it be silent?"

"We got a pest problem. Ironically." James slapped her hand away from the chopping board. "Mouse refused to put traps down, said she'd sort it."

"Joy," he muttered. "Don't eat all the food."

He reluctantly walked to the basement entrance, opened it without a sound and crept silently down the stairs, the closing of the door behind him muting the sounds of the Rats completely. Humans were by nature loud and cumbersome, especially to hypersensitive Jotunn ears, but the burrow was eerily quiet, save for someone's soft, deep breaths.

All the lights were switched off, but he could see regardless- Gwen had ripped up one of the floorboards in the kitchen, beneath which there was a gap about an arm's length deep filled with pipes and dust, some of which had been disturbed by crumbs of food. The woman herself was sat on the kitchen table with her legs crossed and body completely still; her eyes flicked over to him and she slowly lifted a finger to her lips, then patted the space next to her.

He sat down and moved his lips to her ear. "Why?" he whispered, and she shook her head a fraction of an inch, her fine hair tickling his nose. Guessing he wasn't going to get an answer any time soon, he mirrored her position and waited.

About an hour before dawn, scratching noises echoed around the kitchen and Gwen slipped off the table, her bare feet making near-inaudible slapping noises on the floor as she landed. A tawny-coloured mouse had scrambled into view and was cautiously nibbling at the food. After a couple of minutes it bolted, and Gwen grinned.

"It's a mum," she explained to him under her breath, "which means there's a litter, which means there's a runt."

"Doesn't your realm have places that sell animals?" he asked, as she dropped into the maze of plumbing.

"Yeah, but then I'd have to pay. Besides, I got an affinity for the wild abandoned ones." She disappeared into the floor and he heard a few clangs as she squirmed through the pipes, a yelp, then more of the former as she made her way back a few minutes later.

When she emerged, she was wearing a thick coat of dust and a victorious expression, as well as an exceedingly small and exceedingly ugly wrinkled pink thing in her bloodied hand.

"The mum bit me," she explained, "but I got off alright since I didn't touch the bigguns."

"I really don't care. Although you should probably clean the bite before you catch some feral disease and die horribly."

She deposited the kitten in her uninjured hand and turned on the tap, dousing her hand in soap before running it under the boiling water. "Turn the lights on, will you?"

He reached for the switch on the wall behind him and the kitchen flooded with light, only making her look more filthy: she was almost as bad as when he first met her. It was strange how his distaste had changed and grown from disdain and disgust into lust and love, despite the fact that his opinion of her had barely altered at all. He still thought she was vulgar and clever, annoying and fascinating.

"If you call it Algernon again, I'll have to put an end to our relationship," he informed her.

"But it's, like, _the_ mouse name."

"No."

"Fine. But it's gonna be a name to piss you off." She poured a small amount of milk into a saucer, dabbed her finger in it and held it to the mouse to lick off. "Isn't it adorable?"

He raised an eyebrow at her. "What will you do about the rest?"

"Leave some super-longlasting biscuits down there to last 'em through the winter and board up the holes." She wiped her finger on her trousers, thus getting it covered in dirt again, and picked up the kitten with surprisingly gentle hands and wrapped it in an old shirt. "I'll have to stay awake and feed it every couple hours to make sure it survives, but... how's you, anyway? How's Gallifrey?"

"Wonderful, save for the infanticide-committing witches."

"Well, we can't have it all." She set down the mouse and approached him with a wicked grin on her filthy face.

"Don't touch me," he warned her, leaning back.

"But I love you," she crooned, holding out her hands.

"Gwen, I swear-" but he couldn't lift a finger as she very lovingly wiped her disgusting palms down his cheeks. Stupid bloody sentiment. "I hate you."

"I know. _Peaches!"_

"I beg your pardon?"

"Peaches," she repeated, "like in The Amazing Maurice. I'll call it Peaches."

"That's a terrible name."

"I'm only doing it to piss you off. It's either that or I name it after _you_ , Lejemand."

"Don't even think about it."

"It may look like an abomination now, my love, but give it a week and it'll be adorable. Just like me."

"Not exactly the word I'd use to describe you," he replied, "vicious, possibly. Mad, definitely."

"Sure you're not just describing yourself there?"

"It's why I love you," he said, "you remind me of myself."

"Oh, touché, my darling. Tou-bloody-ché."

 **A/N a small chapter. Mouse-sized, if you will.**


	40. Chapter 40

Gwen sat back in her seat and surveyed her little Senate, convened in the well-insulated and officially abandoned warehouse. She had been watching the changes that had been made to the House of Lords back in the UK, watching and making notes on the old hereditary seats slowly being weeded out and replaced by people who were actually useful. And, in the underworld of New York, the same thing had been happening. She had found the most influential hitman, the dealer with the biggest patch, the old soldier who ran the New York mercenaries and so on, and given them a grant (with the threat that if the money was used for pleasure rather than business that they would be losing the money again, along with a couple of body parts) and a position of influence on this little council of important. Power and jurisdiction they now had, tied unbreakably to the responsibility of managing their respective fields just as Gwen wanted them to, and they were more loyal to her than they had been any old mob boss. And, meanwhile, the heads of the old crime families found they were having to work harder to keep their place on the table. And now she had her own little government, a dark and better-managed shadow of the one on the other side of the law.

Take Granny Moll, for example - the head of what Gwen chose to refer to as the "working women" and, at a push, the toms, although often while blushing. She had run a big brothel, not the biggest, although the one kindest to its girls and the best at paying it's taxes. Now there wasn't a hooker in Harlem (or, sacrificing the alliteration, the whole city) that wasn't looked over by her and the Agony Aunts - a clique of frumpy women who made for better security than the black suited agents of the President. STI rates had plummeted too, because nobody argued with the toms about contraception when there was an Agony Aunt waiting to smash their legs in with an umbrella should they say no.

Oh, they didn't like her very much. She heard the whispers better than they did. That Mouse had some nerve, coming over here and going from a nobody junkie to thinking like she owned the place. Sure, the mob had more business than ever, but nobody liked taking orders from a small woman with pink hair. But through hard work she had become respected, and it helped that those who were not capable of respect were shit scared of her. But they still complained about the taxes.

"I resent the notion," Bochelli said, from his new position on the "dregs" end of the council table. "My family makes a voluntary contribution, of course, but to compare us to the common man by -"

"Let's call a spade a spade, shall we, my good man?" Gwen said, to a small murmur of laughter. "You pay taxes, or one way or another you leave this city."

" _One way or another_?"

"I am known for my creativity," she replied. "Aren't I creative, Ben?"

"Veritable van Gogh, Mouse."

"Cheers. There's no room in the new mob for your pride, Don Bochelli. I know several up-and-comers in the five families whose egos aren't so big they need to book two seats on the plane."

He flushed red. "I'm not expendable, you know."

Gwen steepled her fingers. "Oh," she said, "really? Do tell me more."

She waited, tapping the heel of her shoe against the cement floor. _Click,_ it went, _click, click, click, click…_

 _Click._

"I have contacts," Bochelli blurted out. "And – and if you kill me, there'll be a riot. People love me. They won't let you do this."

"How interesting. Anything else?"

 _Click. Click. Clickclickclick –_

"Martoni would never do this! He would never have the nerve, the impudence, the – the – how _dare_ you assume that I'm – that you're – _would you stop with the god damn tapping, you sour-faced bitch!"_

Someone gasped. It seemed louder than it in fact was, since everyone else had stopped breathing.

Gwen smiled at him, smiled so wide there was silver. She rested her foot flat on the floor and leant back in her chair, body language going from expectant to satisfied in a heartbeat. She had won. Everyone in the room knew it, even if they weren't quite sure how.

"Is something the matter?" she asked. "You seem a little on edge recently. I'm worried about you, Bochelli. We all are."

Quick on the uptake, the rest of the room nodded. You had to love backstabbers; they were the involuntary electors of emperors. It was the Ides of March all over again. Fear. That's all you needed. Fear, and the illusion of being in control.

"No," he replied, breathing heavily. "Of course there isn't."

"Stress is perfectly natural. We all love you, don't we? We all want the best for you. Perhaps you should take a break – Ben, organise a nice break for Mr Bochelli, somewhere nice and quiet. Isolated, I suppose you could say. Where nobody will bother him. Everyone will be so happy that you're putting yourself first. In fact, you could probably even take a nice, early retirement and they'd applaud you on a job well done. We can buy you a cottage in Kentucky, if you like. You can spend your dying days there. Wouldn't that be _nice_?"

Everyone was looking at him.

"What if… what if I don't want to take a break?"

"Oh, Mr Bochelli. I'm afraid what you _want_ doesn't really come into the matter."

Bochelli's second leaned in and whispered something in his boss' ear. There followed half a minute of hushed and furious arguing, after which the man turned back to Gwen.

"I'll pay the taxes," he said. "A spade is a spade, as you say."

"So glad we could come to this arrangement peacefully," Gwen said, still with the same brilliant smile. "The cottage in Kentucky's always there if you want it."

An hour or so later, when the meeting had finished, Gwen ran her fingers over the knackered old desk chair that had held the arses of every mob baron for the last fifteen years and smirked.

"People've died in that chair," Ben told her with a grin as the last stragglers left the meeting, and she lifted her shoulder.

"Clearly, they weren't as smart as I am."

"I think it might have gone to your head a little bit."

"Nah," she said, "I was always this vain. Now I just got a reason for it. How're the books?"

He pulled a heavy ledger stuffed with paper towards him, since Gwen had put her foot down about digitalising it. "Sound and solid," he replied, "the amount of revenue we've redirected from profit to community is… stunning, actually. Dunno what we spent it all on before."

"Drugs and hookers, Ben. Drugs and hookers."

He nodded. "That sounds about right. How's Peaches?"

"She's good. Vicious little shit, but good. Nobody'll pick my pockets and get away with it."

"Doubt they could anyway, Pinky."

"Good answer," she laughed. "You know what's weird, though? I was paranoid that once I'd got this, I'd still want more. Like- like power would corrupt me, or summat. But it hasn't. Like, I've got what I want and I'm happy with it." She leaned back in the chair and looked up at the shadowy ceiling. "My life is pretty good right now, touch wood. I don't feel like I want anything else, y'know?"

"You're rambling, Mouse."

"Right, sorry." She yawned. "Gotta go interrogate a guy, now. Some dealer who's been selling dodgy shit to people who don't deserve it, and I wanna see where he's getting it from."

"Can't you get someone else to do that?"

"Nah, I want to. Nice to get my hands dirty every once in a while," she explained, "sometimes literally."

%

"Morning, miss," James said as she shuffled into the kitchen with bare feet and make-up smudged from rubbing her eyes.

"What? What time is it?"

"About half five, miss. I'm off to work in a minute."

She groaned. "I wonder what having a normal sleep schedule's like."

"It's got a lot to recommend to it, miss. There's enough hot water left for a shower, if you want it."

"Cheers."

"No problem. You've got blood on your face, see. I figured you might want to wash it off. I'll see you later." He pecked her on the cheek that wasn't covered in bodily fluid, grabbed his coat from the hook on the door and hurried off to the hotel. Gwen grinned as she limped into the bathroom; not once in that last sentence had he called her "miss".

She fed Peaches and stuck her in a hamster ball so she could run around for a bit (not being quite as trusted as Algernon yet), stripped off her clothes with difficulty due to her aching joints and showered sat down in the bath, letting the near-scalding water beat down on her skin until it turned red. She sung as she rubbed shampoo in her hair, enjoying the sound of her terrible voice reverbating off the bathroom walls.

When the hot water ran out, she swaddled herself in a fluffy robe thing that James had appropriated from the hotel, stuck her head in downstairs to check everything was in order and returned to her old kitchen to find Loki sat on the side, next to a rattling coffee machine with his head leaning back against the cupboard and his eyes closed.

"You look like shit," she said, "and since when did you know how to use Muggle technology?"

"It isn't exactly complex," he said, still with his eyes closed, "and thank you for your concern as to my wellbeing."

"You're welcome. What's bugging you?"

"We apprehended the coven," he told her, opening his eyes as the coffee finished brewing. "Their trial begins next week."

"That's good, right?" she asked, pulling out two mugs and skidding them across the counter towards him. "They're not, like, killing people anymore?"

He decanted the coffee and added a vein-clogging amount of sugar and milk to each. "Say there was a hypothetical child," he said, "a young girl, as a matter a fact. Say she had done hypothetically terrible things, but only because that was what her family instructed her to do."

"Hypothetically."

"Hypothetically," he agreed, downing half the mug in one and grimacing. "Gods, this is foul."

"You drink it for the caffeine, not the taste. Which I'm going to regret, considering I wanted to sleep today. Carry on telling me the hypothetical scenario."

"The penalty for these acts are death," he said, "so as to let the punishment fit the hypothetical crime. But the hypothetical child, she is…"

"Still a child," Gwen finished for him. "And no matter what she may have done, she's still got that look of innocence in her eye."

"The guards tell me she is terrified," Loki said, staring into the murky depths of his coffee, "and not just of them- of everything, including her supposed kin. And yet the people of Vanaheim, they cry for her blood. She was the cause of their own children's deaths."

"You're stuck between a diamond rock and a spike-covered hard place," Gwen said, "let me guess- you let her go free and there'll be a lynch mob anyway."

Loki nodded.

"It's not gonna be fun," she said softly, "but you're the king of them all. Kings have to make hard decisions, sometimes."

"I do not want a child's blood on my hands."

She smiled crookedly. "Look at you, with your conscience and your coffee. Proper domesticated, you are." She sat next to him, and nuzzled into his neck. "At least you're not slipping into psychopathy."

"Ah," he said, "a silver lining. How wonderful."

She elbowed him, and they sat in silence for a while. That was what Gwen liked best about their relationship- as much as she revelled in the arguments, the talking and the sex, it was the brief moments of stillness that set it apart from the rest of her life. "Loki?"

"Mouse?"

"I was just wondering," she said, "what you would've thought of me if you'd found me a couple years before you did. Back when I was still a dealer and a junkie myself."

"What brought that on?" he asked, finishing his now-cold drink with a single gulp.

"Met an old friend today. Well, not exactly a friend, but y'know. A guy. I cut his knees off, but I knew him from when I was doing the rounds. He'd sunk so low, enough that it made me sick to look at him, to think that I used to be something like that. I killed him just to get away from that feeling."

"Well," he said, "if I remember correctly, about that time was when I was hellbent on conquering your planet out of revenge for being shunned by my own family. I don't think either of us were much in a position for sentimental attachments."

"Fairs. We're lucky we met when we did. Plus, you obviously didn't fancy me when I was just a street rat, so you didn't look at me with sex-tinted spectacles until you got to know me as me. And I just didn't like you at first."

"Nor I you."

"Bullshit, everyone likes me. I'm a very likeable person."

"Don't forget humble," he said.

"Oh, I'm the most humble person you'll ever meet, me. Humbler than anyone."

"Except, of course, myself. It's my mild personality that led to Odin thinking I would be a terrible king."

She sniggered. "You're just too nice, you are. Bend over backwards to make everyone else happy, you never stick up for yourself."

"My only flaw."

"That, and you're terrible at sex. Very inexperienced."

"I know. I do, in fact, have a complex about it, as I'm sure you aware. It ties in with my shy and bashful nature."

"Loki?"

"Gwen?"

"You're a prick," she said, and he winked at her.

"What's the phrase you creatures use? Something about pots and kettles, if I remember correctly."

"Something like that." She rested her chin on his shoulder. "I'm sorry you have to do this shitty thing with the witch girl. Being king isn't as fun as it should be, huh?"

He slipped down off of the side. "Your puny Midgardian words do naught to comfort me," he teased her, and she rolled her eyes.

"Ah, go polish your duchesses or whatever it is you bourgeois bastards do nowadays. I'll still be here when you get back."

"I should hope so," he said as he pulled the crystal from his pocket, and she stuck her tongue out at him as he vanished.

 **A/N okay so a guest, GlindaGoddess, asked me a really good question in a review and since I can't answer because you're a guest, GlindaGoddess, I'll take it as a valid excuse to waffle in the notes. Basically, she asked where the plot was amongst all the banter. My answer: when I wrote this, I knew I wanted to try writing in a serial comic style; with arcs over set amounts of chapters but little events and things in each one. So you can divide this into arcs of separate plots: Lucy, the kid they lost, overthrowing Martoni etc, as well as smaller ones like when they go to Knowhere. The idea was that you can just go back and read your favourite short bits, like you do with comics, and it would work as like an ongoing thing you can dip in and out of, with underlying themes in it throughout (Gwen's thing with kids, rise of a new kingpin, Loki gradually becoming slightly less of a shit.) We're just now coming up into the final arc, since there's only a few chapters left. It sort of ties it all together, or at least I hope it does. Then, when Ragnarok comes out, I'll do a sequel as a separate story, which is just one plot rather than a series of loosely connected arcs. Also, I'm glad you like the banter.**

 **Does that make sense? I hope it made sense. TLDR is that I wanted to make this ongoing and rather than thinking out a whole big thing I did a series of smaller things in a single story so it was easier to follow than clicking through the various documents. Also, I'm not a very good writer and I tend to meander a bit since planning is something I can never actually be bothered to do. But thanks for the love, all of you! Y'all are fab. Sorry for the long A/N, and how long it took to update. I love you.**


	41. Chapter 41

Loki traced runes with his finger onto the arm of the throne as the raggedy witches were dragged before him in chains. Their leader glared up at what she thought to be Odin with defiance he would have admired if it weren't for her crimes, and the rest of the women huddled behind her. He kept his eyes- well, eye- fixed on the ringleader, and tried not to meet the face that was only waist height and shaking in terror.

"Helga Sivsdottir," he began, his voice echoing around the glorious chamber and making the audience shiver in respect, "you and your clan, the Völur, have committed crimes of such heinousness I hoped never to see them in this age of light. To worship arcane and disproven gods would be immoral enough, but to sacrifice the innocent in the name of your false idols is an atrocity the Allfather cannot forgive, regardless of sex or age."

One of the women let out a sob, and the others hissed at her to be quiet. Not one of them so much as laid a hand on the shoulder of the child.

"You disgust me," Loki said, with genuine vitriol in his voice, and the crowd flinched as he said it. He held the age-darkened gaze of Sivsdottir with contempt. "Over the course of your activity, the Völur have mercilessly slaughtered two hundred and fourteen children of Vanaheim, and would no doubt have continued to do so had my son and his warriors not continued to do so." He extended a hand to Thor, Sif and the Warriors Three, who dropped to their knees in respect. "Even if this decision were not my own, your punishment would still be the same. Your fate, beldams, is unanimously decided upon, from omnipotent king to lowly peasant."

"We serve no king!" Helga declared with fire in her voice and hatred in her stare. "We worship only the Eternal Goddess, she who brings us our gift, and make no mistake, golden pretender, she will smite you for daring to accost us."

Loki thought of how the children, burning alive, must have screamed. He thought of the daughter Gwen never birthed, of his realm-destroying rage had such a fate become her, and any cracks in his resolve disappeared. "Völur Clan of Sivsdottir," he decreed, "you are hereby sentenced to death by blood eagle at dawn, save for your youngest, who is sentenced to death by beheading. Let it be known the Allfather is not without mercy."

"Murderer!" Helga snarled, "impious prick!"

 _Glad you noticed_ , he thought grimly as the guards took the women away. He dismissed the audience, who had cheered with vengeance twisting their faces at the verdict, and once the room emptied Thor approached him.

"You were right," he said, "to spare the girl the blood eagle. 'Tis a gruesome way to die."

"Do I need my son to tell me that?" he replied, and Thor flushed as he shook his head. "Do not take offence, boy. It is good to have someone to check me of a while, now that Frigga is gone. But ensure the girl is not taken to the prison with the rest of them; put her in the Grey Chamber and station two guards outside the doors, and tell them I will send a third later tonight to explain her fate to her."

"Yes, father."

He watched Thor go, then sent away the rest of the guards. Loki stood up, leaving an identical copy of the Allfather in his throne, and conjured the glamour of a guard himself as he descended the steps. Odin may not have been able to save the child, but Silvertongue was born and raised to treat laws as things to be broken.

He milled around until the moon was at its highest, then made his way to the chamber where the girl was being kept. The two gatekeepers gave way to him with a nod, recognising one of their own, and closed the door behind him.

The girl, who seemed even tinier up close, was curled up in the darkest corner of the silvery chamber- she peered at him through her fingers and shrunk away.

Loki laid the guard's spear aside and raised his hands as he crouched. "I am not going to hurt you," he said as kindly as he could, "but you need to listen to me, child."

"Who are you?"

"Your rescuer." He had ordered for her to be put in the Grey Chamber for a reason; there was a passage behind one of the bookshelves, which, despite being a complete cliché, was one only a single person knew about. "They will check on you in about five minutes, by my count, if they are doing it on the hour as they are supposed to, so we need to be swift."

"I'm scared," she mumbled, and Loki pursed his lips. He really didn't have time for this.

"Why?"

"What?"

"Why are you scared?"

"Because… because as soon as they notice I am gone, they will raise the alarm and start hunting us down." Her accent was rough, a commoner's, but more noticeably she hesitated on almost every word as if she didn't expect to make it to the end of the sentence.

"Ah," he said, "but they won't notice, as long as you are gone by the time they come in."

"I- I don't understand."

"You have magic, don't you?" She nodded. "Then I should have thought the answer obvious." With a little force of will, he conjured up an illusion of her that stood in the centre of the room and watched them impassively.

The girl's eyes widened. "You have it too!"

"Yes," he said, "again, obvious." He crossed to the bookshelf with swift steps, pressed a few of the books downwards in a pattern and it clicked open. "Hurry. Run until you reach a junction, and then wait for me."

She hesitated.

 _"Now_!"

Loki watched her as she bolted, made the illusion take her place by the pillar, shut the bookcase behind her and strode out of the room like nothing had happened. It took five minutes for him to find an entrance to the annals that didn't have people milling around it, and another five to reach the girl, who was crying quietly in the darkness.

"You came back," she wept.

"Of course I did." He took her tiny hand in his and led her downwards, through pitch black corridors he knew so well he didn't need light in them anyway. "You are lucky my mother taught me her tricks, child."

She had stopped crying a couple of minutes ago. "Who was she?" she asked. "Was she one of the clan?"

"A long time ago. Before the dark age."

"Your mother was Frigga?" she asked in amazement, having to take three steps for every one of his. Unlike Lucy, this one didn't seem to complain about walking.

"Indeed she was."

"Are you- are you _Thor_?"

Loki snorted. "If I were Thor," he told her, "your escape would have been far less subtle and far more destructive; not to mention that we would probably both be dead by now. No, girl, I am not he. Besides, the fool could never learn magic."

"She had a third son?"

In the darkness, Loki rolled his eyes. "I'll leave you to figure it out." They emerged into Odin's empty sleeping chamber, and the girl's eyes widened in amazement at the opulence as he crossed to the chest in which he kept that which he did not want anyone to know about and unlocked it. Inside were a few of his possessions that would be instantly recognisable as Loki's, a few purple crystals, and one of Gwen's books. He rummaged through the clutter and pulled out another key, this one taking the form of half a polished geode.

He locked the trunk and guided the girl to where a candlestick was mounted into the wall, slightly different to the style of the others. Everyone knew about the Lover's Passage (an ill-thought out name) that led to the king's chamber, but it had been all but forgotten since Odin married Frigga and besides, who would suspect the Allfather of sneaking the girl out via this route?

He pressed the stone to the protruding pattern of the candlestick and it clicked, the geode glowing green for a moment before fading back to dullness. The passage beyond was dusty and the air tasted like old books smelled, but laced throughout it was a trace of another, more familiar scent.

Loki squeezed the stone and it began to glow again, illuminating the smooth stone walls of the passage that bounced the light back and forth down it to where the corridor turned. Just visible in the shadows that were being thrown was a small figure in dark clothes and a hood, who waved at them. Loki put his hand on the girl's back and pushed her down the corridor, looking behind him all the way to make sure they were not interrupted.

"Wish you'd let me smoke in here," the figure said as they approached.

"The smell would give you away," Loki replied. "Girl, this is Ratatosk. Ratatosk, meet… sorry, what is your name, child?"

"Astrid," she said in a tiny voice, and Gwen crouched down on her haunches.

"Hey, Astrid," she smiled, pushing her hood back so the girl could see her face. "I'm here to get you to safety, okay?"

The child – Astrid – nodded.

"You've been very brave," she said, "braver than I could be. But I need you to carry on being brave for just a bit longer." She straightened up, and lowered her voice to talk to Loki. "You didn't know her _name_?!"

"The witches never gave it. Oh, do not look at me like that. I'm doing what I can - it was either this or the blood eagle."

"The what-now?"

Loki covered Astrid's ears with his hands and told her.

Gwen's eyes widened. "That's… imaginative. I'll have to remember that one. Does she know who you are?"

"She appears to be quite slow on the uptake," Loki said, and Gwen gave him a Look. "I thought it might… distress her."

"She should know," Gwen said promptly, and flinched as a sudden noise echoed down the passage. "What was that?"

"Guards at Odin's door," Loki said, "most likely reporting the disappearance. The horse is waiting for you and it will need no rest until you reach the gateway. Go."

Gwen rose onto tiptoe and kissed him. "Be careful."

"The same to you. And good luck."

He watched the two women disappear round the corner, then retreated out of the passageway, closed it and resumed his glamour of Odin just as the guards gave up with waiting and barged in.

"Your majesty," one panted, "a prisoner has escaped!"

"And who allowed this to happen?" Loki roared. He was really rather enjoying himself. "I put my faith in you and _this_ is what happens? Which one?"

"The child, sir!"

"Then cease with your yammering and find her!"

The guards fled, and Loki rolled his eyes. Sometimes, things were just too easy.

 **A/N SECOND TO LAST CHAPTER WHAAAAAAT. ALSO THERE'S GONNA BE A SEQUEL WHAAAAAAAAAAAT**


	42. Chapter 42

**A/N okay, so you know what I said last update about this being the final chapter? That was a lie. Ragnarok, arguably the greatest film of our generation, was a godsend in that I can work it really well into the plot of this fic. So more chapters! Yay! Also this one is practically 5k long, so savour that.**

 _This is really not my problem,_ Gwen thought as she sprinted down the twisted passageways with Astrid at her heels. _He knows full well it's not my problem. He also knows that my judgement gets a bit… subjective when it comes to protecting kids. Oh, the bastard played me. He is_ not _getting away Scot-free, even if it was for a good cause._

They reached a dead end, barely lit by torchlight coming through cracks in the ceiling above. Gwen knocked on it – sure enough, just as Loki had said there would be, it echoed in the way only heavy wooden planks can. Trapdoor. She felt sideways until she came into contact with a metal bolt, and yanked at the rusted shaft until it went sideways and the trapdoor fell downwards with a cascade of straw and other things she didn't much want to think about, accompanied by the overwhelming smell of horse.

Gwen turned round to Astrid. "I'll give you a leg up," she told her, "once you're up there, go to the stable with the open door and wait for me." She meshed her fingers together to form a foothold and knelt down. "Off you pop, kitten."

Face still wan with fear, Astrid climbed onto Gwen's hands, who winced – the girl was a lot heavier than she looked. With a grunt, Gwen launched her upwards and heard a soft "oof!" as Astrid grabbed the edge of the trapdoor hole and hauled herself up.

 _Right,_ Gwen thought, _my turn._ She would have much rather made her way to their destination entirely underground, but this was faster and speed was an imperative. She bounced on the balls of her feet a few times, then jumped up and grabbed the edge of the hole with her fingertips. She planted her boots on the wall of the passageway and pushed off, using the momentum of the swing to pull herself up until her chest was fully out and she could scramble the rest of the way without much problem.

As Loki had promised, the Allfather's private stables were empty that night, the men out cold and snoring in their beds after having drunk the wine a disguised Gwen had offered them. Loki had said not to even sniff it, as the sedative inside was extremely powerful for humans, and even the fumes that had risen off of it had made her dizzy.

She found Astrid waiting beside a big horse that someone who had not spent their entire life in a city would have recognised as a Palomino, saddled up with enough supplies to last two small-ish women a day or so. "You ever ridden a horse before, Astrid?" she asked.

The girl shook her head.

"That makes two of us, then. Right…" Gwen narrowed her eyes at the animal, who blinked back at her with the look in its own eyeball of pure, concentrated insanity (a look that can only be found in horses). "Kick me and you're burger meat. Capiche?"

She lifted Astrid by the waist and deposited her on the saddle, then dragged a stool out from the corner and climbed on behind her with no small amount of apprehension. It was a lot higher up on a horse than she had imagined it to be, and it smelled. Princesses in books never mentioned the smell.

She reached into one of the packs, pulled out a scarf and draped it over Astrid's head as a kind of hood. "Don't speak," she said, "be as quiet as possible. The way should be clear for another twenty minutes, but I don't want anyone getting suspicious. And hold on to that lumpy bit of the saddle, there. That looks important for not falling off, methinks."

She reached around the girl and took the rein in her hands. "Uh… hyah?" she said hopefully. "Go, horsey, go?" Nothing.

Gwen thought for a moment. Loki had said the steed was very intelligent and would need next to no guidance, but he hadn't included how to put it into gear when he was explaining. She wiggled the reins. Still nothing.

"Stupid bloody thing," she muttered, and kicked at its sides in frustration.

The horse reared onto its back two legs, and every one of Gwen's muscles locked in sheer terror as it galloped out of the stable, its footfall muffled by the leather cloths that had been tied around its hooves. The only reason she wasn't screaming was because every bodily function, except maybe the ones in her bladder, had stopped working as they tore out of the maze that was the servants' quarters at the back of the palace and out into the streets that were the only thing between Asgard's city and the wold that surrounded it, wold that eventually melted into high, purple mountains. Houses passed in a blur and Gwen realised that the horse was choosing the direction and speed they were going in, not her. _This! Is! Not! Enjoyable!_ she managed to think, before her brain gave up again.

They were out of civilisation in minutes, and the horse slowed to a canter as the cobblestones gave way to dirt tracks that gave way to lush green hills. Gwen started breathing again.

"Thank Jesus he didn't give me the one with eight legs," she mumbled, and in front of her Astrid laughed. "You okay there, kitten?"

"Yes. Where… where are we?"

"Buggered if I know," said Gwen, "but it's just gone midnight now, and Loki said we'd be at the hunting lodge by witching hour. You sure you're alright? Don't need to throw up, or anything?"

"No."

"Good. Good for you."

Even with the pain of the saddle slamming into places Gwen tried not to think about, she had to admit that the foothills of Asgard at night were beautiful. The stars were properly visible now, not like last time when she had stayed in the city, and the alien sky was endless and incomprehensibly massive. _Frigga's up there somewhere,_ Gwen thought, recalling what she had read about funeral rites in _The Compleat Hiftory of Afgard._ They would have put her on a boat and sailed her out and turned what they believed was her soul into pure starlight. Gwen, who had been raised strictly Catholic and had had the importance of the immortal soul drilled into her since birth, now tended to fall firmly on the atheist side of things even with a god for a lover, but the Aesir notion of afterlife was so beautiful it almost made her cry.

Just when Gwen thought that she could not take it anymore, the horse slowed down and stopped outside a little wooden hut hidden from the wind in a little valley, with a gurgling stream and a charcoal-filled fire pit outside it. She fell off of the horse, gave Astrid a hand down and walked bandy-legged over to where the fire had been, and poked it experimentally.

"Dead cold," she said, "and damp, too. Nobody's been here for ages, we'll be safe here. Get the bags off that bloody animal for me, will you, kitten?"

Inside the hut was a single narrow bed with itchy blankets, a chair and table, two buckets, and a tiny fireplace with a cast-iron cauldron mounted over the top of it. It smelled of goats, which was barely preferable to the smell of horse. As Astrid came in with the bags, Gwen hobbled over to the fire and lit it with the flint and steel hanging on a hook over the fireplace. She missed her lighter. And her packet of Black Russians. And methods of transport with wheels instead of legs. Central heating would've been nice, too.

The fire flared into life and, once the kindling had caught properly, Gwen threw a log from the pile onto it and immediately extinguished the flames. "Drat."

"I can do it," Astrid said, and Gwen waved a hand.

"You get some rest," she said, "I'll figure it out."

Four attempts and two burnt fingers later, Gwen gave up and called the girl over. She watched in awe as she coaxed the fire into eating up the heavy log. "You're a smart kid, Astrid."

The child shrugged. "They made me light the fires," she said.

"For cooking food?"

"No."

 _Right,_ thought Gwen, _of course they did._

There was a griddle beneath the cauldron, and Gwen took the cold meat and bread from the pack and stuck them on there to cook. She boiled some water, too, and dropped a teabag each into two metal tankards. After having removed the scarf from Astrid's head and wrapped it around the tankard so she would not burn her hands, she removed the bag from the tea and handed it over to her.

"Let me introduce you to the magnum opus of my species," she said, "PG Tips. Don't tell Loki."

Astrid sipped at the scalding water, and winced as it burned her tongue. "He really is Loki," she said, "isn't he? He was supposed to be dead, but he's…"

"Doing a bang-up job of being a king, I reckon," Gwen said. "Better than his dad did, at any rate."

"What about Odin?"

"Alive," she assured the kid. "On Midgard for safekeeping."

"You trust him? Loki?"

"He trusts me," she shrugged. "Hence why you're still alive."

"But he's evil!" Astrid protested.

"Why? Because he belongs to a race of evil people?" Gwen asked. "Ain't that your backstory, too?"

"He killed people!"

"Yeah," she said, "I'll give you that. But life tends to be more complicated than that, see?"

"He tried to take over Midgard!" Astrid continued. Clearly, this was a bugbear for her.

"Yep. And then he saved Asgard, and now he rules it better than anyone's done in millennia. And he saved you, too." Gwen sighed, and tried to think how to explain it. "If life was as simple as good and evil," she said, "there wouldn't _be_ any evil, because why would anybody choose not to be good? But instead, there's just… people. And people do some awful stuff, but they do some really great stuff, too. And they're not limited to one or the other. It's best not to get too caught up on the whole morality thing, I've found. Just try and stay alive and don't be a dick unless provoked."

Astrid looked at her, with big brown eyes that were too young and too scared to belong to someone who has been through the things she had been through. "That's not fair."

"Such is life." Gwen gave her a small smile. "You don't have to worry about any of that, kitten. This is your golden ticket to safety. I'm taking you to Alfheim."

"But I come from Alfheim! They'll know me!"

"It's a big place," Gwen said, "or so I've been told. And you don't have to run as far as people think before they forget you were even there in the first place. Loki knows these people – a lord and lady. They're elves, they got magic like you do. They can't have kids, and they're big on second chances. You'll be safe."

Astrid shook her head. "No such thing."

Gwen could feel her heart breaking inside her chest. "Kitten," she said, taking her hands. "This world is a cruel one, and it has been unspeakably so to you. I understand, I really do. But there are some people who are kind, and this couple are two of 'em."

"What about you?" Astrid asked. "I've never even heard of Ratatosk."

"I'm nobody," Gwen said. "I've just got fingers in a lot of pies. And I'm the only person Loki could trust to help him."

"He loves you," Astrid said. It wasn't a question.

"The evidence points to that conclusion, yeah."

"But you're not… you're not Asgardian, are you? Or an elf. You talk funny, you look… different. Why did you want to help me?"

 _Because when I look at you I see Lucy, and I see my child that died before it was even born. And I cannot and could not help them, so by the gods and hell on Earth I will help you._ "Because I'm nice like that," she said, "and it's always good to have the king of Asgard indebted to you. Get some food in you, Astrid, and get some sleep. We've got a few hours before we need to move again, and the Einherjar won't have been able to follow us with the horse's feet covered up to leave no trace."

"But if someone _does_ find us –"

"Then they'll have to get through me. And some of the hunting weapons in here look really _interesting,_ " Gwen said, which made Astrid smile. The girl wolfed down the food and Gwen pulled the coarse wool blanket over her on the bed, before sitting down with her own, now stone-cold, cup of tea.

After half an hour, she said, "That is the worst fake snoring I've ever heard. What's the matter?"

"I can't sleep," said the muffled voice of Astrid, who had the blanket pulled up over her head. "And you said I had to, and I didn't want to disobey you, and… sorry."

 _Disobey,_ thought Gwen, _bloody hell. What have the bitches done to this poor girl?_ "You should've said," she told her, sitting on the edge of the bed. Astrid peered at her over the edge of the blanket, and Gwen pushed her hair back from her face. "You want me to tell you a story?"

"Why?" Astrid asked.

"It's what parents do to get their kids to fall asleep," said Gwen, "it always worked for me. That's probably because I got the bible, which is boring as all hell, but still. I'll make it more interesting for you."

"Yes," said Astrid, resting her head in Gwen's lap. "Yes, please."

"Right. Let's see if I can make something up…

"Once upon a time," she began, "there were two brothers, two princes in fact. One was big and bold and golden, and the other was small and silver and sleek. Golden was preferred by their father the king, Silver by their mother the queen, but both loved each other equally, both were raised as heirs to the throne and both got into an awful lot of trouble.

"But gold is always destined for greater things than silver, just as silver is destined for greater things than stone. The world was no longer balanced and, against his wishes, silver found himself being not a prince, but an outcast. He sought the help of a dragon, and dragons are not known for their kindness. In return for a half-hearted promise of a kingdom for his own, Silver found himself doing terrible things."

A small, skinny hand shot out and gripped Gwen's wrist so tightly she almost does. "Wait," said Astrid, "does this story have a happy ending?"

"Of course it does. The prince gets rescued by a knight in shining armour, and she and he run away to have great adventures together. But you've got to let me get to that part first."

%

Once Astrid had fallen asleep, Gwen sat on the open doorstep and smoked as she thought about it. Running away. It would be terrible, irresponsible, an abandonment of everything she had built and, what was more, there was no _reason_ for it. But every time she saw Loki the urge to drop everything and fly was almost unbearable. It would ruin them both, if she wasn't careful. And she had to be careful these days, with so much riding on their shoulders.

 _He's selfish,_ she thought. _He's arrogant, and dangerous, and he really is a monster when you think about it. It can't last. It never could. Quit while you're ahead._ They didn't make any difference to how miserable she felt, but it had been worth a shot.

The cigarette glowed like the unfamiliar constellations sprawled across her head. "You know the answer, little mouse," she muttered to herself, crushing it beneath her boot. Smoke from the dead embers dissipated in the chilly night air. "You just don't want to face it."

She would have to talk to him eventually. But now, all she wanted was to go home and get this whole bloody business over with.

%

By mid-morning Gwen had dozed herself, and woke Astrid up with a mug of clear, cold water that tasted slightly sweeter than what she got out of the tap back home. The horse, which had stood waiting for them outside the hut without needing to be tied up, did not seem remotely tired as they climbed back on it and headed in the direction of the mountains, which had snowstorms billowing around them like wedding veils.

But that was not their destination. Just before the chalk and clay gave way to granite beneath the horse's feet, a collection of monoliths arranged in a large, perfect circle rose up onto the horizon like giants. Waiting for them was a hermit. He was definitely a hermit, thought Gwen, because he was bald, and had a long beard and bad teeth, and was also very naked.

"I am Rig," said the hermit, bowing. "You seek passage to Alfheim?"

"Mmhmm," said Gwen, determinedly looking anywhere but at the wrinkly and borderline offensively unclothed Rig.

"Your names?"

"Astrid," said Gwen, "and Ratatosk."

Rig's teeth rattled in his skull as he chattered in excitement. "I have heard your name across the Realms, Ratatosk!" he exclaimed. "In Asgard, ay, and Midgard too, in the pirate cove of Knowhere and in Alfheim to boot! So Heimdall sees, so I hear!"

"Fascinating," said Gwen, who was covering Astrid's eyes with her hand.

"And you ride Gullfaxi, the Allfather's second steed! I hear of this steed, though they do not think I am observant enough to guard the Bifrost, oh, no! Heimdall is stronger, so they say! Heimdall is wiser, so they say! Heimdall smells better, so they say, and wears clothes like some kind of heathen! Well, says I, if he is so strong and wise and trousered then why is Asgard so repeatedly bloody attacked, then? And they says to I, they says he still does a great deal more than you could, Rig, and they sends me out here to this bloody stone circle in the middle of bloody nowhere, and they says you isn't coming back to the city until you learn what clothes is! Hah! I says I shall learn what clothes is, and I wears socks in the winter to keeps my toes warm, and that doesn't please the bastards! Bloody king and his bloody horse and his bloody gatekeeper and his bloody bastard trousers! He can keeps 'em!"

"Look," said Gwen, "I mean, listen - Rig, as you've probably guessed I'm in good company with Odin, and there's people out looking for us, and if you'd be so kind as to forget you ever saw us after you let us through your lovely, um, stone archway, I'd be happy to drop your name into the conversation when I next see the king."

Rig's cataracts-heavy eyes bulged. "I wants two weeks in the palace, all expenses paid, no trousers to be a part of the picture," he said promptly. "And I wants to be honoured in that big fancy hall with all the statues of nuddy ladies in it, and I wants Heimdall to be there to watch it, and I shan't accept anything less, or you'll find my tongue'll get much looserer inside my skull."

"Deal," said Gwen. Loki had given her big fat coins to pay the man with, but this would yield much more entertaining results.

"Then step this way, my loveliest ladies, step right this way and I'll show you to Alfheim, so I will!" Rig cackled, and various body parts jiggled in an alarming manner as he hopped up the hill to the biggest stone arch. Through it Gwen could still see hills and various and sundry other countryside things, but they had no correlation with the world around her – _Alfheim,_ she thought. "It helps to close your eyes, madam and miss, or your stomach gets right wobbly when the Realms meet."

Gwen didn't need to be told twice. She took Astrid's hand, walked up to the archway and closed her eyes before stepping through.

Her body felt very hot, then freezing cold; gravity stopped working for a moment, then came back with the full force of a brick wall travelling at terminal velocity. When Gwen opened her eyes she and Astrid were stood at the very top of a lone hill overlooking a forest of trees with blood-coloured leaves that whispered in the breeze, whispered words that Gwen could almost, but not quite, understand. It was a few degrees warmer here, and the air tasted like nectar. Upon closer inspection of a nearby tree Gwen could see that the leaves were not leaves at all, but petals, big heavy blossoms whose scent weighed heavily on the air and made her think of lazy sunny afternoons, and slow kisses, and sweet tea.

"You are Ratatosk?"

A woman and a man were approaching them, both tall and beautiful with facial features similar to Astrid's. They wore fine silk robes in colours Gwen didn't even know existed, and seemed to glide towards them rather than walk.

"That's the one," said Gwen, not letting herself appear even slightly disconcerted by the two physically perfect beings now stood in front of her. "Lady Alvida, Lord Einar. You're twelve seconds late." She did not bow to them.

The man opened his mouth to protest, but his wife laid a calming hand on his arm. "And this is the child?" she asked. "What is her name? Lejemand did not say."

"Astrid." Gwen kept the girl's hand held tightly in hers as Alvida knelt down in front of her. She knew that she should ask further questions before choosing to trust the elves, but there was a great and terrible sadness in Alvida's eyes that she recognised from every time she looked in the mirror. Lost children leave a mark on the soul that can only be seen by people who have suffered the same thing. "She is young, and scared, and has no faith in the world."

"We do," said Einar. "She will want for nothing."

"No," said Gwen, "not that. She will _need_ for nothing. There's a big and important difference there, milord. Tell her the truth, not what you think is the truth. Teach her to do the right thing, not the easy thing. Give her rules, so she can break them, and learn what happens when you break the rules. Do not give her the world, but tell her that it is hers for the taking. Raise her not to be a perfect daughter, but a good woman. Because if you don't, sir, I will find out." She left the threat hanging, unspoken and half finished, in the air, and looked to Alvida and Astrid. "What happened?"

"We had two," he told her, "both boys, both stillborn. The second nearly killed her, too. We were not seeking another chance, but when we heard that there was a child of the clan about to be executed by Odin…" he shook his head. "The Allfather has been reckless, of late. The coven is one thing, but there are wars erupting all over the Nine Realms that he does not seem to want to deal with. There have been rumours, rumours of Ragnarok and far worse than that but still, he does nothing. He is distracted."

Gwen did her best not to look too guilty. "And Lo – and Lejemand came to you?"

"Yes. He said he could steal her from right under the king's nose, and said he would send a woman called Ratatosk to us with her. We had not heard of him before, but we sent out word and there was a story of a man called Lejemand and a woman called Ratatosk causing havoc in Knowhere with Tivan's collection. Anyone who makes Tivan's life difficult, we thought, was trustworthy."

So they didn't know he was Loki, then. Gwen quite liked the sound of these Lejemand and Ratatosk, roguish adventurers travelling the universe and causing as much harm as they did good. It was a shame to kill a dream as fun as that.

"You are wary," said Einar, "you have every right to be, just as I am wary of you." He spat into the palm of his hand and held it out. "Astrid will be safe and loved here. If nothing else, I give you my word on that."

Gwen smiled, then spat on her own hand and shook his.

"We will leave you a horse," said Einar, as Gwen released Astrid's hand and the elves prepared to leave. Ride it to the base of the hill. There is a cave there, filled with –"

"Purple crystals?" Gwen asked, and Einar nodded.

"Lejemand told us that he would meet you there by noon. Thank you, Ratatosk."

"Pleasure." But before they left, Astrid ran up to her and hugged her, squeezing Gwen so tightly she was pretty sure two of her ribs cracked. "Hey, kitten. What's that for?"

"Thank you," she whispered. And then the elves were gone and Gwen, a human in a strange land, stood alone on the top of the hill and let the sweet honey-wind dry the tears on her face. Once she was calm again, she chose to ignore the horse and made her way down the hill on foot, meaning she arrived there the same time Loki emerged from the cave, cloak pulled up over his head.

"Well?" he asked, throwing her a purple crystal. She caught it one-handed, squeezing the thing so hard it bit into her skin.

"Safe and sound. Can I go home now, please?"

"Not quite. I need to find a place on Midgard to keep my father for when Thor returns from his latest exploit –"

"I don't _care,_ " Gwen exclaimed. "I just want to go home. I've had enough of Asgard for a lifetime."

Loki's eyes narrowed. "What's wrong with you?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"You're lying."

"Take me home, Loki. Now." She took his hand and tried to pull him along, but he didn't move. "Come on –"

He pulled his hand out of her grasp and pressed his palm to her forehead. Gwen gasped as a rush of thoughts ran to the front of her mind; thoughts about them, about him, all the bad thoughts and the sad thoughts and the one big one that had been blossoming for a while now and had bloomed in earnest under the Asgardian stars last night. She staggered back, tearing herself away from him, and grabbed her hair to try and stop her head from spinning.

"You read my mind! You went inside my fucking head, you bastard! How _dare_ you?"

"You were planning to leave me? _Me?_ After everything we've been through?"

She spun away from him, storming across the perfect elven landscape. "I can't believe you did that," she said.

"Don't run away from me! Gwen, this is ridiculous." She could hear him coming after her, and sped up. "Stop being so childish, will you?" He reached out to take her arm.

"LET GO OF ME!"

Her voice echoed around the hills. In the distance, a flock of hummingbirds took to the sky in panic. Loki stepped back as though he had been physically hit.

"You stay out of my head," she snarled, eyes swimming with hot, furious tears. "What's in there is mine, you understand? _Mine!_ Not yours!"

"I'm… sorry," he said, his voice almost a whisper by comparison. "I just – I don't want you to go. Please." He took a deep, shaking breath, and gave her a brittle-bright smile that didn't belong on a trickster's pointed face. "I think you're the only thing keeping me sane."

She could still feel his hand on her brain. "I can't," she said, crushing the crystal in her hand. By the time Loki started to lunge towards her, Alfheim was already dust on the wind.


	43. Chapter 43

"My Lord," said a guard, "Heimdall is here to see you."

"If this is a complaint about the triumph for Rig, I don't want to hear it."

"I believe the Bifrost has a vermin problem."

Loki propped himself up from his slumped position on the golden throne. "What?"

"He said something about mice."

The wine Loki had been drinking suddenly tasted very sour. "Send him in," he said, "and as for the rest of you – get out."

While he waited for Heimdall to enter the vaulted golden hall, Loki jumped down off of the throne and grabbed another flagon of sweet wine from a table. By the time the gatekeeper had made it to him, he was two glasses into it. "If you're here to lecture me," he said, "I don't want to hear it."

"Your anger is making you reckless," Heimdall said calmly, not acknowledging the flagon Loki offered him. It was infuriating, how, how… _unaffected_ he was.

"I'm not reckless," Loki snapped. "This is justified. Aren't you aware, Goldeneyes, of how much I've been through? How much I've suffered? I deserve a damn statue! But it all goes unappreciated." He jabbed a finger at the doorway, beyond which the rest of Asgard lay. "They should _worship_ me. I will _make_ them worship me. I will have festivals held in my honour because nobody, _nobody_ disrespects me. Especially not some rat-brat from Midgard."

"Your father is dying."

"Impossible."

"He no longer has the support of his people," Heimdall continued as though he had not been interrupted by the overlord of the Nine Realms. "The attention they gave you is not enough to sustain him, especially now you are neglecting your duties."

"I am doing no such thing."

"When was the last time you left the palace grounds?" Heimdall asked, as though he didn't already know the answer.

"I don't need to," Loki scowled, "I have guards to do that for me."

"Loki," said Heimdall. "Your father cannot continue like this. I know you plan on hiding him from Thor on Earth, but by doing so you will kill him. His death will unleash a storm upon this world the likes of which we have never seen –"

"Do you really have so little faith in me?"

"Yes."

Loki hadn't been expecting that. It managed to stun him, just for a moment, and when the shock left the anger set in. "How dare you?" he asked. "How _dare_ you? Don't you remember who I am, gatekeeper?"

"Better than you do, it seems. I have known you since you were a child, little prince. I know all too well when your heart overrules your head –"

Loki dropped his glass and drew back his fist, vision turning red as though he were falling back into frost giant form. In that moment he could not think of anything more satisfying than the blossoming pain that came with punching an Asgardian round the face.

Heimdall's arm blurred and he caught Loki's hand before it could land the blow. "You need to stop drinking," he said.

"This is treason," Loki hissed, and Heimdall had the nerve to shrug.

"Then I resign from my post."

"You can't do that! If you do then I'll arrest you!"

"Right," said Heimdall, "good luck with that." And then he punched Loki on the nose.

%

The doorbell rang. This was weird, because nobody _ever_ rang the Burrow's doorbell. This was because there was usually two very large, burly men standing in the way of it, doing their best to look innocent and inconspicuous. This didn't work much, but at least it stopped people from unnecessarily ringing the doorbell.

Until now, it seemed. Gwen grabbed a handgun and hobbled down the stairs, wincing with every other step. Since coming back from Alfheim her bad leg was worse than ever; she was going to have to get a cane. She kicked her shoes off so whoever was ringing the bell wouldn't hear her footsteps, held the gun to the door at gut height and, without undoing the latch, pulled it open.

There was a short old man with an eyepatch and a fluffy white beard on her doorstep. He didn't look as though he was… _all there._ "Can I help you?" Gwen asked, pulling back the safety. And then she saw who he was with. "Oh, for fuck's sake."

Opening the door fully and tucking the gun into the waistband of her jeans, Gwen prepared to kick Loki all the way back to Asgard. There were dark shadows under his eyes, he was swaying a little and, last but not least, his nose had been broken and there was blood all over his face.

"This is my father," he said, slurring slightly. "I'm sure you'll get along."

"What the hell are you –"

"I told you before," Loki snarled. "He's staying on Earth until he finally bites the dust – which, if I'm lucky, should be any day now. I'll reimburse you when he's dead."

"Hang on," said Gwen, "you can't just –"

He turned around, nearly fell over, and disappeared in a purple flash.

"Bastard!" She turned to Odin, who had been stood there impassively the entire time. "You'd better come in."

Bobby was in the kitchen. "Who's the tramp?" she asked, as Odin shuffled in behind Gwen.

"King of Asgard."

"He hasn't taken the break-up well, then?"

"The _real_ king," said Gwen, "this is his dad. But… no. He hasn't."

"So that's how you know my son," said Odin, and the two women jumped. "I never expected him to fall in love with a human."

"Thanks," Gwen muttered. "I'll put the kettle on, shall I?"

She got one of the Rats to look up a nearby retirement home on the internet and called the number while Odin sat at the kitchen table and was generally fawned over by her girls. They all seemed to get along quite well, and if it weren't for the fact that the idea of having her ex's estranged father living with them was _literally the worst thing she could ever imagine and she had had some really bad trips_ she felt as though he would have been fine living out his days in the Burrow.

"Shady Acres Rest Home," said a sickeningly chirpy voice on the end, "how can I help you?"

"Hi," said Gwen. "I'm looking to deposit an old person at your establishment."

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but since the home is due to be demolished in four months we aren't currently taking on any new –"

I'll give you half a million to take him until then."

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "When would you like them to move in, ma'am?"

Once it had all been sorted out, Gwen shooed the Rats out from the kitchen and sat down opposite Odin. He met her glare evenly, without any kind of malice or ill intent in his one eye. "Are you really dying?" she asked him.

"Perhaps."

"Where was Loki keeping you?"

"Knowhere. He came to visit me once or twice. I believe that, one of those times, he took you with him. It is a shame that we didn't meet then."

For some reason that made Gwen angry. Why hadn't he trusted her enough to tell her this? Sure, she kept secrets too, but this was different. Wasn't it? "Why did he move you?"

"Because Earth has just become safer than Knowhere, due to the presence of the Sorcerer Supreme."

"The what-now?"

"Stephen Strange," said Odin. "He will no doubt know that I am here. You will most likely be contacted by him soon."

"I know him already," she said shortly. "The wizard on Bleecker Street. Does you being on Earth put it in any more danger?"

"No."

"Good. The porters from Shady Acres will be here to pick you up in half an hour." She stood up and marched for the kitchen door.

"What is your name?" Odin asked her.

She hesitated. "Why do you want to know?"

"Because my son loves you."

"Not anymore, he doesn't," she muttered, and Odin chuckled.

"Oh, to be young. Tell me your name, child."

"I've got a few. Which one would you like?"

"The truest one."

"That's not an option. You can use Gwen," she said. "Since you're almost family."

"I must thank you, Gwen," said Odin.

"It's not that nice of a retirement home, really."

"Not for that. For suffering Loki better than anyone did since his mother died. I knew there had to be a woman stopping him from killing the world."

Gwen looked over her shoulder. "I didn't _suffer_ him," she said. "And I never stopped him from doing anything. I just loved him, that's all. Maybe you should try it sometime."

For the first time, Odin showed some flicker of emotion: for a moment, she could see sadness in his eye. "I think it might be too late for that," he murmured. "But thank you, all the same."


End file.
